The Urban Pantheist

I went up to the Stone Zoo administrative offices to do a presentation on tick prevention. I was early so I collected these insects off the windowsills and released them outside. Here are an Asian ladybeetle Harmonia axyridis and a western conifer seed bug Leptoglossus occidentalis--the two insects most likely to be found by windowsills in New England in the winter. A few months ago I ran across some folk biology claiming that one of these insects feeds on the other, which is why they are often found together. I jumped into action to correct that! (Hopefully not too pedantically.) The wcsb feeds on conifer seeds while the ladybeetle feeds on aphids--they are found together because they both seek out cracks in which to overwinter. In our drafty New England buildings those cracks are around our old rotten windows and the insects come all the way indoors where it's warm. The bug has spread from western North America while the beetle was deliberately introduced for aphid control.


This spider species first made its appearance in this post, in which one of the vets I work with summoned me to remove it from her office. This individual, a juvenile inconspicuous running crab spider Philodromus sp., was found in precisely the same place. I placed a plastic cup over it and used a slip of paper to knock it from the wall into the cup. Not because I was worried about handling this tiny harmless spider, but because the flattened shape of it--an adaptation for living on and under tree bark--makes it almost impossible to handle without squishing it.

The Western Conifer Seed Bug, where we easterners most often encounter it: on the windowsill.