Insect QUESTions 4

Sure, a lot of insects have wings. I still think it’s excessive to call everything a “fly,” especially when there’s an entire order of insects, diptera, filled with actual flies. It muddies things a lot to have dragonflies, damselflies, stone flies, caddis flies, may flies, fireflies, and butterflies that have the same name but are not flies! That list includes six other orders of insects, and I know I’ve skipped some.

I’d never seen a caddis fly before, so it took me an embarrassingly long time to figure out what it was. I tried grasshoppers, moths, bugs, and just “brown winged insect” before I landed on the answer. They’re pretty great insects. The larvae make incredible casings out of whatever is available in stream beds.

This midge is a fly. I love that it keeps its two front legs in the air above its head. It makes it look like it’s about to dive. For a little guy, it has a lot of common names, but I’m guessing small insects generally don’t get a lot of research or positive attention.

There are a lot of dragonfly species, even red ones, so I’m nearly sure this is an autumn meadowhawk, but not 100%. People have known about monarch butterfly migration for a long time, but many other insects move seasonally as well, and their travels are still being looked into.

I found this cricket scuttling along on a cold but sunny day in Montana. I wasn’t able to identify it any better than “field cricket,” or a scientific name I’m fond of, gryllus. Even though there are over 100 species, you often have to look at them under a microscope to tell one species from another. What!? And then you have dogs, where a pug and a Saint Bernard can interbreed.

That’s all for this week. Cheers!

Insect QUESTions 3

This lady beetle looked pink in real life. It took me a while to search the images available online and figure out what it was. That’s partially because there are so many kinds of lady beetles. The red ones with black spots are not all the same animal. Two black spots? Seven? Thirteen? Each are different species and can’t interbreed. There are also yellow, orange, and black ones. Putting numbers on insect species is an ever-changing game, but there are at least 6,000 coccinellidae.

Boxelder bugs are relatively common and some people are bothered by them because they live through the winter and sometimes find houses to be more comfortable than bushes. I think their colorful markings are stunning, and it’s impressive that they survive freezing temperatures.

I had to turn to the good people at bugguide.net to identify this moth, and even then, I only have a genus. There are hundreds, at least, of species, and a vast void of information about them.

Don’t you want to know more about this pyrausta? It’s adorable. Well, at least we know this one lives in the Pacific Northwest, is around as an adult in late October, and likes clover.

That same day in late October, I saw a giant yellowjacket and took one photo of it. I came back a few minutes later and realized I’d been in the presence of royalty. The males, I learned, don’t live much longer. The queen will find a place to overwinter (using her fat stores) and later emerge to make a nest and lay her eggs.

I’ve posted over 50 of these on Instagram now, so there will be at least two more weeks here.

Insect QUESTions 2

Many of my comments from this second batch of Instagram posts were about names. As I’ve said before, there’s a dramatic difference between many adult insects and their larval selves. There are plenty of common names for caterpillars and other larvae but maybe they could have scientific names too? It might incentivize more study of pre-adult insects.

I had no idea flies like this existed until I saw one. If you cover the wings and head with your hand, the abdomen looks exactly like a ladybug, down to the white “eye” patches. Equally impressive is the fact I didn’t see the other creatures on this flower until I was writing the words on the blown-up image. There’s a spider and, I think, a wasp at the center right.

It took me a couple of hours searching terms like “longhorn beetle enlarged thigh” to figure out this is a phymatodes vulneratus. They’re distinctive looking, yet there’s no common name. Can we agree to call it “Big Leg Pete,” and who decides?

This is a really cool moth I saw flying around the Oregon Coast. The patch between the red shoulders is a brilliant blue when it catches the light. The name, pronounced “Ten OOCH ah,” means comb-like, and it does have a mighty nice, fine-combed antennae. But so do lots of other moths, so I wondered why this one got named for them.