Insect Picture of the Day

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A few days ago I got an e-mail from Jeremiah titled simply, “YES!” I quote now from his e-mail:

I’m extremely excited about this picture, only because I’ve been trying to capture a bee in flight for about a week now. This little bugger was taunting me for an hour or so while I worked in the yard.

Well, I’m excited about this picture simply because it’s awesome. I love the not-quite-stopped-in-flight feel of this shot.

Jeremiah did continue with a key question that I figured I could answer here for everybody:

I heard somewhere that these kinds of bigger bees don’t sting, but have always been afraid to test that. Looking at the pictures I’ve taken, I don’t see a prominent stinger, but I do see ~something~. Glands of some kind? I don’t know. A hidden stinger, waiting like a ninja to strike when an unsuspecting me decides to test the “no sting” theory? Probably.

Let me save you some heartache: yes, they sting. A friend of mine stepped on one once while barefoot in such a way that the bee was not squashed but was trapped between his toes. It expressed its displeasure in a manner quite suited to its membership in Family Apidae, which as we learned yesterday means “the family of bugs who are pointy.“

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According to Steve Jackson, this is “Our old friend Apis mellifera, getting very happy about an oxalis in a sidewalk planter.”

So, I bought a book a few months ago called “A Dictionary of the Roots and Combining Forms of Scientific Words”. It rocks. For example, from this book we discover that meli- means “honey” and -ifer- means “bearing, producing or plundering.” Apis is in fact simply the Latin word for “bee”. The word is not merely a name, however: its base form api- means “point” or “tip”, so when you run it all together you get “honey-plundering pointy bug”, which sort of explains why Latin died out.

Okay, before you relegate me to the “less reliable than Wikipedia” category, the name actually translates to “honeymaking bee.” (The name apis really does mean “point” or “tip”, however, and I think it’s awesome that the ancient Lats¹ really did go around calling them “pointies”. About the only thing funnier would be if there was a creature named “stingme”.)

¹ You know, the people who spoke ancient Latin. Not to be confused with their neighbors, the ancient Delts, or their longtime rivals, the ancient Glutes.

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Steve Jackson uses the scientific method in much the same way I do, specifically in a slightly amateur fashion that positively reeks of enthusiasm. Steve has learned to look at things and think about them, rather than try to capture measurements that match what he’s already read in a book or on Google. He watches behavior and learns from it. He has learned to see what is in front of him, rather than learn the word for what he is seeing and assume that the word is the thing. He has an appreciation for science that is, in a word, “awesome”.

If he had a lab, it would have a Jacob’s ladder and a monster on a table. I’m just saying. Oh, and one of those machines that goes parp.

Anyway. The reason for this comment is that Steve has this to say about today’s caterpillar (click the larger version to see all of the caterpillar):

“I think this guy is a tent caterpillar, or at least closely related, but there were no tents visible. He was just standing still on an oak trunk, looking incredible. I don’t have enough depth of field at that range, sadly, so the good focus here is on the head. This is a big guy: 55.5 mm long. How do I know this? Because, not having a ruler with me, I broke a twig to his exact length and brought it home to measure.”

See? Awesome.

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Alan Whitaker took a picture of this spider a couple of weeks ago while on vacation in Bermuda, immediately prior to defeating it with his hookshot. He could also have used the Hero’s Bow, but says he was trying to conserve arrows for an upcoming boss fight.

The rest of you need to play more Zelda, I’m just saying.

Meet Gasterocantha cancriformis, the crablike spiny orb weaver. This spider has a fun name. You might be thinking that Gasterocantha means “skull” and cancriformis means “with flaming tentacles shooting off it”, and I certainly couldn’t fault you for that reasoning. But it actually turns out that Gaster means “abdomen”, canthis means “corner or spike”, cancer means “crab” and formis means “in the shape of”. So Gasterocantha cancriformis literally translates to “spikybellied crabshaped”. This is an orb weaver, meaning she makes classic flat spiral webs, so that’s how we get her full common name: Crablike Spiny Orb Weaver.

It turns out that these spiders are somewhat common in the Southeastern US. Bermuda is in the caribbean sea, a few thousand miles off the coast of Florida, so the region and climate still fit. They actually come in several colors, including a yellow one with blue spikes that looks like nothing so much as a smiley face. Nothing says “I’m a freaky spider” quite like having your backside look like a yellow skull grinning “Welcome to WalMart, Have A Nice Day”.

Thanks, Alan!

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Jim Phillips strikes again, this time with a photo of a tiger beetle. He writes:

“Finally got a free day to go out and try to get some bug pictures. I really hit the jackpot at the Middle Patuxent Environmental Area in Columbia, MD…

“Tiger Beetle: These guys are really difficult to get pictures of–they fly away at the slightest provocation. This guy landed near me while I was photographing a flower; I swiveled the camera towards him and managed to get one good picture.”

It seems to me that tiger beetles are made, at least in part, of awesome. So shiny… I wonder if the white flare on its back is the Sun, or the flash from Jim’s camera? At any rate, we need to get more tiger beetle pictures up in here.

Thanks Jim!

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This is the same common ground beetle we saw last week. Thanks are due to Tim Eisele for pointing out that this is probably genus Eleodes, which is in the darkling family, Family Tenebrionidae. I really like this photo because it’s got “the human factor” in it.

I find two things about this photo particularly interesting.

First, taking the photo. Several people have written to ask how I take bug photos. A small part of it is having an eye for composition, but don’t mistake this for talent: this is a skill that can be learned. The biggest part is knowing my equipment. I know about how close I can get before the autofocus will stop working, and how far away I can be and still get a composition that shows the insect clearly. But sometimes it’s just dumb luck, which is the case with this photo. The bug was moving too fast for the autofocus to follow, and the laps it was making around my hand made it hard for me to even look through the viewfinder. I knew at that point that it was a matter of luck, so I decided to make it a numbers game and take lots of shots. I set the focus distance manually and then just followed the beetle around my hand, hovering the camera about where I thought the focus distance was.

The second thing is about the bug itself. If you try to pick up a stinkbug by pinching its sides, you will discover that it is amazingly strong. It lifts its legs up and back and actually shrugs itself out of your grasp. I have yet to be able to pick up one of these bugs and keep hold of it in this fashion. I fear that gripping it any harder than I already do will result in crushing the bug.

Anyway, I got really lucky with the numbers game, so today is a twofer. Enjoy!

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Okay, technically, the flight portion hasn’t actually started. Tiogshi Laj went back to the ant colony he photographed last week and took another look. This time he found about a dozen of these larger, winged ants hanging around. Those are either new queens or male drones. I’m guessing queens because they are almost twice the size of the workers, and males tend to be fairly close to normal size. Either way, this is a mating flight in its first stages!

The thing that’s really crazy, however, is that I’m pretty sure those are Formica ants of some kind, but Formica ants don’t start mating flights until next June! I could believe it if this were in a lower latitude perhaps, but Tiogshi is in Canada! It is entirely possible that the ant mating flight schedule¹ I consulted was inaccurate or incomplete. It is even more possible that I have simply misidentified these ants. But still, it’s interesting to note.

Thanks, Tiogshi!

¹ Yes, such things exist. This implies that there also exist people who spend their time creating them.

P.S. This mating flight chart from Germany shows a couple of Formica species that fly in mid-April. Ants species aren’t quite as cosmopolitan as humans, but if they can fly in April in that climate, perhaps they can fly now here.

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Butterfly Spring continues here at InsectPOD, again thanks to Kathleen Spivey. This was taken at a butterfly exhibit in New York City last Spring. I have nary a clue as to its identification so I’ll open the floor to the real bug experts now.

I haven’t seen many butterflies out here yet, though the weather has not been entirely conducive. Last week we had several days in the low 20’s (°C; mid-70’s °F) followed by a crushing cold snap including two snowstorms. Now the snow is gone and the weather is trying to warm up, but my neighborhood is getting pounded by sustained winds. The winds are a semiannual feature out here by the lake, lasting for about 2 weeks each Spring and Fall, and it’s just not a good time to be a bug if you’re not a strong flier.

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This spider was sunning itself by an irrigation pond near Utah Lake last week.

I have no idea on the species or genus, but you can tell a lot about this spider just by looking at it. Notice the tall head and the large eyes? This is a sight-hunting spider. Notice the large, strong legs? This spider is built for running speed. I believe this spider is a wolf spider, but that’s about like looking at a dog and saying “Ah yes, the world-famous brown dog.” Wolf spiders use their eyesight and speed to hunt prey by running it down.

These spiders don’t normally let humans get too close. Happily, the reason it was sunning itself was that it as about 3°C (38°F) outside at the time. The reason it was sunning itself was so it could kickstart its own metabolism.

Body length on this critter was about 1cm, so it’s one of the smaller wolf spiders.

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This picture clearly demonstrates how much better than me Earl Goodson is at getting clear shots of tiny ants.

With apologies to Earl, I don’t have time for a long post today. And it really sucks because there’s so much to talk about.

Actually, you know what? Go google Adele M. Fielde. She’s crazy awesome. She did hundreds of experiments on ants, writing some of the definitive literature on them. She invented portable nest boxes that greatly aided scientists desiring to study ants. She has a very readable style. Did you know that ants smell with their antennae? Okay, but did you also know that each segment of their antennae smells something different? One segment for “is this my nest?”, another segment for “are you from my nest?”, yet another for “is this food?” Adele M. Fielde is the person who figured this all out.

Oh, and she did it over a hundred years ago. Check out this paper on scent recognition: http://www.biolbull.org/cgi/reprint/5/6/320.pdf