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By Ben, on September 3rd, 2010
Lots and lots of insects are small. Even butterflies, those showy, gaudy, colorful things, can be very small (they can also be pretty big, of course). The other day I was out weeding the front yard when I noticed this little teeny tiny butterfly in the grass:
In this photo, which is backlit, you can see the faint yellow patterning through the wings. But since I couldn’t see that through my viewfinder (it’s a small butterfly, remember?), I decided to crawl around to the other side, so I could have the sun behind me:
And that’s when I was able to see [...]
By Ben, on September 2nd, 2010
I was browsing my favorite used bookstore in Boca the other day (I say “my favorite,” but actually, I think it’s the only used bookstore in Boca. Nevertheless.) when I ran across four volumes in the Florida’s Fabulous… series. I pounced on them the way a tiger beetle pounces on other beetles, or a robber fly pounces on a bee, even though paying full price for these large format mass market volumes wouldn’t break the bank.
Mark Deyrup, the author of Florida’s Fabulous Insects, is another of those entomological writers who proves how one can relate charming stories in an engaging [...]
By Ben, on August 5th, 2010
Thanks to the wonderful ID skills of the folks over at bugguide.net, I can confidently say that the moth of the day (seriously, there are hundreds of them in my backyard–the only problem getting pictures of them is that they don’t alight often and they’re skittish on approach) is Melanchroia chephise (White-tipped Black – Hodges#6616):
This one is resting on the frond of a small Sabal palmetto (Cabbage palm) that still has a bit of the overnight rain (or the morning sprinklers, not sure which) on it. It’s already hot and humid, and these black-winged moths definitely prefer to rest in [...]
By Ben, on July 27th, 2010
This morning I was able to get organized early enough to go for a bike ride with little e before breakfast and work. After each ride, there’s usually a decompression session where we play outside–him in the dirt, me with a camera if there’s something I can see. And this morning I saw, for one of the first times I can recall, the phenomenon of a butterfly “puddling.” There was a Fiery Skipper (Hylephila phileus) on the hood of my car, drinking up the fallen dew:
H. phileus is a widespread species in North America, most common in the South, but [...]
By Ben, on June 29th, 2010
There aren’t a ton of animals visible in the steamy sunny heat of late June here in Boca; those few that there are, apart from the omnipresent mockingbird and his counterpart in red, the cardinal, tend to be insects. Here’s a blue dasher dragonfly that seems to favor a perch on the spicewood tree on the side of our house:
As you can see from the red eyes, this is a not-quite-mature male (the adult male has green eyes). But he’s got the adult male body coloration: blue abdomen with black on the tip, and yellow on the sides of the [...]
By Ben, on June 15th, 2010
Sean Carroll, writing in the New York Times, posted a very interesting article yesterday about an ecosystem in Costa Rica that has developed thousands of caterpillar species: more from this one small area (77 square miles of Costa Rican rainforest) than in all of North America. Among the species described in this three-decades-long research project are hundreds of caterpillars (and even chrysalises) that appear to have evolved a deterrence against predation: eyespots.
This strategy is not new to science: in the 1860s, Henry Walter Bates developed a hypothesis of mimicry among animals whereby tasty treats like caterpillars and butterflies experience selection [...]
By Ben, on March 16th, 2010
The other day I was talking about spines on palm trees and got to thinking about defensive strategies of plants in general. It seems like there’s a general arms race going on between primary producers (organisms that convert sunlight into energy that sustains them) and primary consumers (organisms that capture that energy by feeding on the primary producers). Since most primary producers are plants and algae, by definition most primary consumers are herbivores. So in order for a plant to pass on its genes to its descendants, it must ensure that it survives long enough to reproduce.
One way to do [...]
By Ben, on December 25th, 2009
As usual, this Christmas enabled me to stock my bookshelves again, this time with a couple of excellent gifts from my lovely wife: Bugs in the System (NY: Basic Books, 1995) by May Berenbaum, and The Earwig’s Tail (Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 2009), by the same author. I have only just begun to read, but have already found a gem in each.
By order of seniority, I’ll quote from the older volume first. The topic is etymology:
The body division is the trait to which insects owe their name: Insecta derives from the Latin for “cut into,” as in “cut into pieces,” a [...]
By Ben, on December 18th, 2009
Last year I ran across a pair of walking sticks (Anisomorpha buprestoides) during an afternoon stroll at Yamato Scrub. They were in such a visually striking pose that I had to stop and take a picture, and then read what I could find about them on the web. And it made for some interesting reading.
Since then, though, I’ve been doing more reading, and at a more leisurely pace. One of my favorite reads came from the shelves of the Broward county library: Thomas Eisner’s For Love of Insects, which I checked out over the summer and promptly devoured. Since then, [...]
By Ben, on December 14th, 2009
A couple of weeks ago (December 2, actually), I happened to be outside and found this larva of Agraulis vanillae, the beautiful Gulf Fritillary, on our maypop (passiflora) vine. I can’t get over how those little feet work so well to keep these guys attached to whatever they’re clinging to at the moment.
Seeing this caterpillar was a bit of a surprise, because most of that entire fence on the side of the house is covered with a very aggressive Aristolochia vine that these fritillary caterpillars can’t eat. But way back when we planted, we had two (or maybe it was [...]
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