3:00 snapshot #1009-1012 out of sequence family snapshots

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100 More Species #22: Aphid killer

Aphid killer, Tribe Syrphini

Alexis noticed this tiny caterpillar surrounded by aphids and ants on the underside of a nasturtium leaf. We deployed our excellent caterpillar guide, looking especially at the slug caterpillars, but came up empty. I looked for nasturtium in the list of caterpillar host plants, but only found the cabbage white, which this was not.

I decided to try bugguide.net, searching for caterpillar + aphids, figuring this relationship probably had been documented before. I found a post making the same wrong assumption we had: that this was a caterpillar. The assumption had been corrected: no dear fool, this is a fly larva. More precisely, it is the larva of a hover fly. Some hover flies start their lives as aphid killers, sluglike maggots that creep along plants gobbling up aphids as they go. There's yet another reason not to kill insects that resemble bees and wasps if you're not sure what they are. The bee-mimic hover fly you kill today won't produce any aphid killers tomorrow.

Astute readers will have realized by now that I have, yet again, cheated. This larva may very well be the same species as one of the adult hover flies I've already counted this year. Alas, there's no way to know, without collecting the aphid killer and rearing it to adulthood--these animals are not as well studied as many others, alas. But I thought the story and the creature were interesting enough that they belonged here, in spite of possibly repeating the same species.

Species of Least Concern, episode 2

Hey everyone! The second episode of my podcast is up!

http://soundcloud.com/urbpan/species-of-least-concern

Please listen to it and if you like it, "like" it on facebook. If you don't like it, don't be shy tell me why!

If you want me to keep making them, please offer suggestions for topics or send me stuff to identify! Future episodes will have other peoples' voices besides my own, as I hope to hold interviews via skype, or even in person if I can swing it!

It's only eleven minutes long, just put it on as you do the dishes or something.

100 More Species #23: Orchard Orbweaver

Orchard orbweaver Leucage venusta

The orchard orbweaver is a beautiful little spider striped with silver, yellow, and green. Some individuals have orange spots on their undersides; variations within the species were once taken to be different species entirely but they have been conflated. They are a woodland species, but the edges of shrubbery in the suburbs seem to suit them fine; they range from southern Canada to Central America. One source notes that, when disturbed, the orchard orbweaver drops from its web to the ground. This second photo shows my subject in the process of, but not quite committed to this behavior. Perhaps it is reluctant to drop its morsel of insect, still enfanged.