280 days of Urbpandemonium #149

It was a hot sweaty day and I was carrying a full armload of stuff from the hot sweaty stuffy AAZK loft. I set down my load and felt up to brush away a drop of sweat from my face. The drop was more solid than I expected, and this droplet of a spider fell to the floor.


I felt bad for my rough handling--was I responsible for that missing right foreleg? This appears to be a small member of the Thomisidae* family of crab spiders. These spiders typically wait on flowers to ambush predators. Why it was on my sweaty face I'll never know.

* Thomisso = old Greek "whip"

280 days of Urbpandemonium #150

My dad and I were walking along the paved path at Millenium park in the roasting sun. The goldenrod along the path was crawling with these black beetles. Black beetles aren't much to write home about, I generally think, but I stopped to observe the unusual swarming behavior. Soon it became clear that these beetles were distinctively different from anything I knew well.


Naturally I let one crawl on me, to get a better angle for my photographs, and to give a sense of scale. When I submitted these pictures for identification, one expert suggested that I might want to refrain from handling them in future. This is a black blister beetle Epicauta pennsylvanica*, one of a group of beetles that can defend itself chemically--reportedly causing a blister on human skin. This species is known to gather on goldenrod and other plants in the aster family.

* Greek epi 'upon' + caut 'burn, burning' (refers to toxic secretions of these beetles)

280 days of Urbpandemonium #151

I stopped along the expanse of goldenrod to look at a small wasp. In the field, I was sure I would not be able to identify it without a lot of help. Once I blew up the picture and looked at it, I recognized an old friend--smaller perhaps than I remembered her, but unmistakeable in her red outfit with yellow stripes. This is a native paper wasp--I'm so used to seeing the invasive European variety that I'd forgotten what to look for.

Two experts that I've consulted disagree, albeit slightly, on what species we're looking at here. One says that it's the species that was more common before the European displaced it, the northern paper wasp Polistes fuscatus.* Another somewhat more intriguing theory, is that it's P dorsalis** one of the smaller species in the group, more common in the Southeast but known to occur in Massachusetts. Either way it's a native social wasp, peacefully drinking nectar and pollinating native goldenrod.

* "Smoky-colored founder of the city"

** Dorsalis refers to the back of the body. Dunno.