Noninsects of 2019

If you don’t like arthropods (insects and spiders and such), get ready to rejoice, because once this post is done, I’ll turn to other subjects. Meanwhile, this is the one that’ll give you the heebie-jeebies for sure. After several posts highlighting the various insects I photographed in 2019, I’m doing a post on non-insect arthropods.

As you might remember, one of the key identifying features of insects is their number of legs: six. So if you see something that looks like an insect and it doesn’t have six legs, then it’s probably not an insect. A millipede is a prime example, because it has not just six legs, but a million.

Just kidding. It’s not really a million legs; it’s usually more like 80 to 100 or so. Interesting fact: they have two pairs of legs for each body segment, not counting the head and tail (which have no legs), and the first three body segments (which have only one pair of legs per segment). As the millipede grows and molts, it adds new body segments. These humble arthropods eat humble fare: lichens, maybe, and decaying vegetation. At least some types of millipedes (usually the ones with bright warning colors) can secrete toxic substances (including cyanide) if they feel threatened. But unless you’re planning on eating one (not recommended), why would anyone threaten a millipede?

Anyway, we found this cute little millipede walking around on our front porch steps in the late afternoon sunshine on March 13; it was a fairly warm evening. It was only about 1¼ inches long. The warming temperatures must have roused it out of its winter torpor.

The next two are spiders. The first is an oddball called a featherlegged orbweaver.

We get these around our yard each year, and I took this photo on June 5. Why do I call it an oddball? Well, first, it just looks odd. The forelegs are typically held straight out in front of the body, though sometimes they hold their forelegs foreword in a Y shape. Either way, they look rather peculiar.

By the way, in the photo above, she is facing downward, her forelegs stretched out straight in front of her, and above her abdomen is one of her egg cases, which is shaped something like a whelk shell. These spiders create a line of these spindle-shaped egg cases, which look a lot like their abdomens, then pose along the line, blending in.

But there’s more. Although they’re an orbweaver (a weaver of orb-shaped webs), they’re not true orbweavers (a member of the Araneidae or typical orbweavers, the family of spiders that build orb webs). Featherlegged orbweavers instead belong to a family of spiders called cribellates, or cribillate orbweavers (Uloboridae), because they possess an unusual sieve-like (perforated) plate called a cribellum, which is positioned at the place where silk exits the spider’s body. This cribellum causes the silk to become hackled—to have woolly fuzzy extensions along its length, instead of being a smooth-sided silky strand. Because the silk is so cottony, it easily snags the legs and other pointy, jagged body parts of insects. They stick to it the way rough dry fingertips snag on polyester fabric.

In fact, this cribellate silk is so good at snagging insects, it replaces the sticky goo that other spiders have on their webs. Also, cribellate spiders have such success with their hackled threads that they do not even have venom; they don’t need it. Not having any venom is a true oddity for a spider. Instead of injecting venom into the prey, they regurgitate digestive juices onto the bound prey, then lap up the liquefying meaty juices. It’s sort of how flies burp up digestive fluids onto their foods, then sop up the goodies.

The other spider I photographed (above) was a longjawed orbweaver, genus Tetragnatha, in family Tetragnathidae. These are also called “stretch spiders,” for the way they rest. Holding the two pairs of forelegs straight forward, and the two pairs of hind legs straight backward, they—with their elongated, narrow bodies—look like little twigs. The “longjawed” part of their name refers to their huge chelicerae. Best not to imagine yourself as a mayfly when you contemplate the hunting of longjawed orbweavers.

They are fascinating spiders that are associated with boat docks and the vegetation around lakes and streams. This longjawed orbweaver built its web among the big tropical plants we keep along the retaining wall of our driveway.

Finally, the other noninsects I photographed were these water springtails (above). Long considered insects, because they have six legs, springtails as a group are now classified separately from insects. They may have six legs, but they aren’t related to insects. I photographed these floating on a pond on a relatively warm day at MDC headquarters, March 23.

Springtails are fascinating! There are all kinds of interesting facts about them, including why they are not considered insects. Here’s another cool fact: water springtails (this species), for instance, can see polarized light—an adaptation for living near water! Do look at my writeup on water springtails on the MDC field guide.

More Insects of 2019

I’m continuing my little series on insects I photographed this year. Although in previous posts I grouped them by order, in this post, it’s kind of a grab-bag of miscellaneous types of insects.

Several teeny-tiny baby mantids were hanging around the backyard on May 30. I'm pretty sure these were the ubiquitous, nonnative Chinese mantises. They must have just hatched, which explains why they were still so near each other. Ravenous little buggers, they have to disperse quickly, or they’ll try to prey on each other. When people say it’s a “dog-eat-dog world,” they really mean it’s a “mantis-eat-mantis world.”

On June 6, a mayfly subimago (or “dun,” if you’re into flyfishing) was resting on our screen door. Mayflies are the only insects that molt once more after gaining wings. You can tell it’s a subimago (subadult) because its wings are whitish or cloudy looking.

I was on a roll in June! Here’s a crane fly that was resting on our aluminum front storm doors. See those weird little dealy-bobbers extending out from the body behind where the wings are attached? Those are called halteres, and they are a feature of true flies. True flies have only one pair of wings, right? Well, the second pair was modified into these halteres. Apparently, they function like little gyroscopes and help the fly to navigate. This would be especially useful if you’re, say, a house fly, zipping around at a million miles per hour.

You might also notice a little point at the abdomen tip. Fear not—this is only an ovipositor, not a stinger. This harmless, harmless, harmless female crane fly uses it as an egg depositor. Adult crane flies don’t have mouthparts that function, so they can’t bite.

In late June, I saw a handful of scenes like these on the undersides of some of the leaves on our black oak tree. Tiny blue-black spheres, many with holes in them, with several itty-bitty wasps scampering around nearby. This one had me confused, and I’m still not sure what’s going on. But here’s what I think:

The spheres are eggs from some kind of insect species. Maybe a hemipteran? And the “flies” are little parasitic wasps, Telenomus-somethings, perhaps the parents guarding the parasitized eggs, or (I think more likely) perhaps they are newly hatched adult Telenomus fresh from emerging from the eggs of their host species. They had long, fast-moving antennae—something I associate with parasitic insects, since they’re constantly trying to find suitable hosts as the clock is ticking on their own lifespans.

Above is another insect we saw at the end of June, at La Plata. It’s a moth fly, probably Clogmia albipunctata. It’s indeed an actual fly, a true fly, in the same order as houseflies, mosquitoes, horse flies, crane flies, and so on. But this nifty little fuzzy fly has scales on its wings, which makes it look a lot like a moth. So, “moth fly.” They are, alas, associated with kinda skanky wet areas, since their wormlike larvae are famous for growing up in dirty sink traps and other wet places with lots of decaying organic material. This is why you often see moth flies hanging around near sinks and bathtubs. But you have to admire these furry little fuzz muffins of flight.

Finally, a couple of mantises. These are representatives of Missouri’s two most common species. The one on top is native, the Carolina mantis, and the one below it is the Chinese mantis, a nonnative/exotic/introduced species (technically, it’s invasive, though hey, it’s had about a century of concerted, purposeful introduction as a so-called agricultural pest-control species, so it’s pretty late to be trying to put this genie back in the bottle).

The True Bugs of 2019

Continuing my little series sharing some of the insects I photographed this year, grouping them by order (or whatever, as the case may be). In this case, yeah, order: Hemiptera, the true bugs.

First, a fascinating species that I don’t think we have here in Missouri: the woolly alder aphid; Prociphilus tessellatus. I saw these at a reclaimed wetlands in Virginia on June 12. There are a ton of videos about these weird aphids. I shared links to four of these videos in the preceding sentence. If you click on any or all of them, you’ll enjoy. Incredibly interesting behavior. In my one photo, note the attending ant.

Also, that same day in Virginia, at the same community wetlands, I found a colony of dogwood spittlebugs (Clastoptera proteus) drinking and hopping around on a bunch of native viburnums (I’m pretty sure that’s what those shrubs were). These were the adult spittlebugs, so they were no longer living in a mass of spittle. Instead, they were having a grand time drinking sap and hopping around in the sunshine on the leaves of an entire colony of acceptable food plants. There were, of course, plenty of birds hanging around, too, which no doubt abruptly ended the fun for many, many of these spittlebugs. Because this, my friends, is what bird food looks like.

About a month later, we noticed several colorful leafhoppers on our baby sapodilla tree. (We grew our little tropical sapodilla from a seed within a fruit we bought at Robert Is Here!)

One of the most memorable things I read about leafhoppers this year was someone likened them to speedboats. And yes, they do look like speedboats! Sleek and slender, with spiffy colors and markings—wow! The only thing is, you have to look carefully at them to appreciate them, because they’re tiny.

Did you know that leafhoppers cover themselves with wax? Sometimes you can see a little white oval spot on the second half of their bodies, which is kind of a reservoir of waxy-stuff. They use their little comblike serrations on their legs to wipe the waxy stuff over their bodies. The wax helps to repel water, and maybe even more importantly, it helps repel the sticky excretions that come out of their friends, relatives, and neighbors after they feed so heavily on sweet plant sap.

This particular miniature speedboat is Graphocephala versuta. You could call it the “cunning sharpshooter,” because versutus is Latin for “cunning” and Graphocephala members are in a leafhopper subfamily called sharpshooters.

One of my projects this year was adding to the true bugs on MDC’s online field guide. You can see them all here.

Two New Friends I’d Like You to Meet

Hi there! Sorry for the absence, but you know how it is—summer—gotta live it up while you can. We recently took a trip to Ohio, and before that was preparation, and after that was dealing with all the stuff that had piled up. You know.

Meanwhile, I’ve been working on another lengthy post. (BAD blogger! BAD! I should know by now that “no one reads long posts” and that I’m just wasting my time. At the very least, I should break it down into smaller chunks. Right? Because everyone’s got ADD these days. Right?)

Well, anyway. Sometimes you do things just for yourself.

Today, I have a few new friends to introduce to you. I suspect both fall into the category of “I’ve seen them, but we’ve never been formally introduced.”

New Friend Number 1

First, I’d like you to meet a little fly (a dipteran—a two-winged insect) that has been unusually prevalent in our yard this year.

The name is “picture-winged fly”; it’s called that because of the little black, orange, and white triangles and dots that appear on the wings. Delphinia picta is the proper name. My photos are only so-so; you can see better ones here at BugGuide.

Viewed from above, they’re rather triangular. They have a habit of moving their wings in a circular motion while they’re walking around—like they’re rowing a boat.




If you’ve seen them before, you probably haven’t paid much attention to them, because they don’t bite or sting, they don’t fly in your face, they don’t enter your house.




The m.o. of the picture-winged fly, as far as I can tell, is that they love compost and other decaying things. As larvae, that’s their home and their food. (They’re kind of like fruit flies, in this respect.) I think that’s why we’ve been seeing them a lot this year: They’re especially prevalent around our compost bin!

Well, they can have that rotting ol’ leaf stuff: “Knock yourselves out, little dudes.”




By the way, I think that’s a gas mask they’re wearing!


New Friend Number 2

This one has a rather strange story. First of all, rest assured that this little insect (no more than 3/4 of an inch long) is indeed a moth. A moth with narrow wings that fold straight down its back.




Unlike a lot of moths, this one has pretty colors and is active during the daytime.

The name is ailanthus webworm moth, or Atteva aurea. (In this case, the scientific name is easier to learn and say than the common name!) Here it is at BugGuide.

Does the name “ailanthus” ring a bell? Well, Ailanthus is the genus name of the tree-of-heaven, an oft-planted (and oftener-escaped) tree originally from China. Like geraniums, begonias, and forsythias, ailanthus’s genus name has become its common name as well.

So Ailanthus altissima, the so-called tree of heaven, is as hardy as all get-out. Tough as nails! (One reason they were planted in urban areas is that they can survive in rough neighborhoods! One of their common names is “ghetto palm”; another is “tree from hell”!) They’re an invasive exotic pest tree that easily out-competes our native trees—they’re bad news, and in North America they deserve extermination much, much more than, say, rattlesnakes and copperheads, who belong here.

The ailanthus webworm moth uses ailanthus as a host tree—lays its eggs on it, and the larvae (little silk-spinning caterpillars) gobble up the leaves.




So now you’re wondering if the ailanthus moth didn’t also come from China—perhaps as an experiment in biological control. But no! They are a native North American moth whose original favorite host trees are the tropical paradise trees (genus Simarouba).

Ailanthus webworm moths are originally native to the tropical Americas, where paradise trees grow, but now that they’ve found ailanthus trees to be delicious, too, they migrate north each spring—even into Canada—to take advantage of all the free food. (Unfortunately, they don’t seem to do much harm to the evil, invasive ailanthus trees. Poo!)

Apparently the ailanthus webworm moths cannot survive freezing winters, so you have to wonder what the point is to them breeding and laying eggs on ailanthus trees this far out of their survival range. It sounds like any eggs, larvae, pupae, or adults caught here in December would expire the way an orange tree would.

Hmm. Maybe the moth’s lifestyle is just as messed up by the presence of the invasive tree as all the trees and other interconnected, native organisms being displaced by it.

So the next time you see one of these pretty little ailanthus moths, think of its unknowing sacrifice up here in the cold northlands, and thank it for doing its best to help cramp the style of those invasive trees.

Eastern Cicada Killer Wasps (Sphecius speciosus)

A blue jay nailed a cicada at lunch today; I saw it from the screen porch. The cicada buzzed suddenly and long, an auditory exclamation point if ever there was one. Then the tone wavered once, and continued more thinly as he got free of the jay.

The jay jetted after the tailspinning cicada, scolding it.

—Caught it. The cicada’s rasp ended abruptly.

Insect life is fraught; they are lucky their nervous systems are so simple. There are a ton of them, and a ton of checks on their numbers. Annie Dillard summed up their situation: “There is a terrible innocence in the benumbed world of the lower animals, reducing life there to a universal chomp.”




For the past month and a half, we’ve had the cicada killers again in our backyard. These solitary wasps attract attention wherever they live, because they are so large—up to about an inch and a half long—and so busy. They’re damned intimidating! But I urge you to learn more about them. They will not hurt you.

Let’s discuss armament first: The males have none; they literally cannot sting you. They can poke at you with their pointy abdomen, but that’s it. The females can sting, but they won’t—well, unless you are harassing them bodily, just as a hamster will bite you if you squeeze it too hard.

They could conceivably bite you, but then so can a katydid. So let’s just stop thinking of cicada killers as scary, right now.




Cicada killers follow the general lifestyle of most wasps, which is for the females to build a nest, collect insects and spiders, paralyze them, and lay their eggs on them. The newly hatched wasps (why not call them babies?) eat the food their mothers hunted for them. Remember that a mother cheetah brings food to her kittens, too.

Because they’re solitary, each wasp is generally on his or her own; there isn’t much of a communal nest, although apparently sometimes females will share a burrow.




The males are downright hostile to one another. They emerge from their natal burrows before the females do and immediately establish territories. Each male patrols his spot, circling in reconnaissance, resting on a leaf or branch, or hovering over the area, and vigorously chases out just about any kind of winged intruder, even wayward butterflies. . . . It’s like they have lots of testosterone, okay?




We’ve seen some heated altercations between male cicada killers; they grapple in the air; sometimes they drop heavily to the sidewalk, with a cracking sound that just can’t mean anything good for their health.

The males treat female cicada killers quite differently, of course.

Once the females are pregnant, they tunnel into the soil, carrying the dirt in their mouths, creating a nest in which to store cicadas and eggs. These tunnels can be 1–4 feet long, with multiple chambers.

The evidence aboveground can be striking—mounds of dirt in your yard, or in golf courses, in gardens, wherever the earth is light and friable. The entry hole is about an inch wide, and there’s usually a small ditch leading to it that looks like someone dragged a thumb across the mound in a curving path.

Some people get bent out of shape over these mounds, but I contend that the wasps are helping to aerate the soil. And if cicada killers have chosen your soil for their nests, then take it as a compliment: your ground is loose and workable!


So, in case you haven’t figured it out yet: the female cicada killer wasps hunt cicadas, to provide food for their babies.

Cicadas are hefty prey for a wasp—so now you understand why cicada killer wasps are rather large, too. They have to transport a cicada’s dead weight all the way back to the burrow.




And this, too, is remarkable. Howard Ensign Evans described the scene in his book Wasp Farm: “Wasps are now out en masse harvesting the bounty of insects. Hear that cicada stop his song mid-way? Like as not he is a victim of the giant cicada-killer, who will inter him beneath the driveway.”




So, up in the tree, the cicada killer stings the unfortunate cicada, paralyzing it; then she has to fly it home. But it’s too heavy for her to truly “fly”—instead, it’s more of a controlled glide. Sometimes the wasps have to climb up another tree trunk with the prey in order to glide again and gain more distance. If they’re lucky, they land pretty near the opening of the tunnel.

And they quickly lug the cicada inside, where it will never again be seen by human eyes.




I have seen them swoop in many times with their prey. The immediate impression is that a stupendously large bug has just crash-landed nearby. Once—in fact, it was when I was taking pictures of the micrathena—a cicada-laden wasp zoomed right in between my legs. I hadn’t known it, but I was standing exactly in front of her burrow.

I’m sure it took courage on both our parts!

Now that it’s late August, the cicada killers’ lives are winding down, just as the nights have finally gotten tolerably cool and the tree leaves have become faded and leathery. It’s all part of the seasons, the rotation of the Earth, just as each summer the onset of cicada song lets us know it’s time for the dog days, and how many weeks until the first frost . . . and when to look for the new crop of cicada killer wasps.




Books Adored in This Post

Howard Ensign Evans, Wasp Farm (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1985).

Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek (New York: Harper and Row, 1974).


Photographs by Susan Ferber, who has a great time each summer making portraits of our cicada killer wasps. Doesn't she do a great job?

Honey-Glazed Cicadas

Hah! Now I’ve got your attention! I bet you were thinking this was going to be a recipe!

Nope—this one fits into the category of “natural history notes.” (Aren’t you relieved?)




I took this picture about a week ago; I was in Columbia for an appointment, then picked up lunch and met Sue at Stephens. We had our sandwiches sitting on the wall next to the lovely Eero Saarinen–designed Firestone-Baars Chapel, in the shade of some pines.

Oh! Did I mention that we got me a new camera? Well, it’s used. Off of eBay. It’s another Nikon Coolpix 4500, just like the old one. A dinosaur compared to newer models, but let me assure you, being able to swivel the camera body makes up for its age. (Especially when one is attempting to photograph a spider hanging hip-high in her web—from below.)

Luckily I had the camera with me that day, because this was a remarkable sight. There were several cicada molts attached to the trees. (I guess a plenitude of cicada nymphs in an area is one measure of how undisturbed and healthy a plot of land is.)

And these pine trees were weeping sap, as they do, from places where they’d been trimmed.

So this isn’t really honey—it’s pine sap.

But it looks like honey, and it’s just as sticky!

Fortunately, the adult cicadas got clear of the sap before it oozed upon their spent exoskeletons. I mean, there are enough dangers out there for the adult cicadas; they don't need any pine sap to be threatening them, too.

Ah, but that’s for another post . . . stay tuned.

Yellow-Collared Scape Moth

I took this picture yesterday (July 3): It's a yellow-collared scape moth, Cisseps fulvicollis.

Yes, I finally looked up this little sucker. I've seen them, known them, since I was a little kid. They always looked like weird fireflies to me, with the orange "shoulders" and the black body. I never thought too much about them.

We have a ton of blue ageratums that come up every year--apparently it's one of the scape moth's favorite food plants.

And it turns out "lightning bug" is the correct "idea," as these moths (yes, completely harmless moths, which unfurl proboscises and sip nectar from flowers) are Batesian mimics for distasteful beetles, such as lightning bugs, which carry toxic and nasty-tasting compounds called lucibufagins.

And they also supposedly mimic wasps, too, which can sting. Thus they're double-Batesian mimics, right?

(I think they look more like lightning bugs, don't you?)

Oh, by the way, by the looks of the antennae, this one would be a male: On our air conditioner, catching the good vibes.

Lettered Sphinx Moth

This moth was standing on the screen of the bathroom window on Monday morning, the eleventh.

Because I’m not very good about identifying the basic brown moths (all I knew was that this was some kind of sphinx), I made a point of looking it up. “What’s That Bug” to the rescue! Here is their page for sphinx moths.

Another Web site that was helpful is this one.

So what we have here is a lettered sphinx moth, Deidamia inscriptum.

Other well-known members of the sphinx moth family (the Sphingidae) include hummingbird and clearwing moths (which look like a cross between a hummingbird and a bumble bee), tomato hornworms (most sphinx moth larvae have a horn on their tails), and many others. They are often remarkably large, and many have glorious colors, eyespots on their hind wings, and so on. Some of the darker species look like B-2 bombers when they’re at rest. Really cool.

Anyway, this little feller is one of the more drab types, though this species does have the distinction of being one of the earliest sphinx moths to emerge in springtime.

Adults like to feed from lilac and phlox flowers, apparently, and the larvae like to chew up leaves of grape and Virginia creeper, as well as members of the genus Ampelopsis (more vines: possum grape, porcelain berry, peppervine, etc.; some of these plants are invasive exotics).

Lettered sphinx moths are found in the eastern half of our country, more or less.

From the same Web site cited above: “Females call at night, and males fly into the wind to pick up and track the pheromone plume. The species is also active during the day.”

Males, such as this one, commonly rest with the abdomen strongly curved. Probably showing off their “junk,” huh?

Or . . . just happy to be alive—in between the severe thunderstorms, we’ve been having some really nice weather this spring.