Bugs must be high on the list of “deplorables” maintained by most people, but heck, there is some redeeming value in everything in nature. We doubt though that bugs will displace snakes on this list of deplorables. However, as Beck and Garrett[1] would say “it’s fascinating to learn why so many different types of creepy, crawly creatures were put here to aggravate us, help us, and to offer great beauty”.
Because bugs are so valuable
to the cycle of nature, it would be appropriate to remind ourselves how some of
them interact with their fellow bugs and with other organisms. Bugs also interact with nonliving things,
like our gate controllers and other mechanical and electrical devices which is
not one of their redeeming features.
Realize that not all these
creepy crawly things are bugs. Some are
bugs, but some are beetles, insects, and even others to be named. “Bugs” is certainly a good catchall term
though, so we will often just use that term.
Entomologists will tell us
that the biomass of insects on earth is at least ten times the biomass of humans. That’s not hard to believe considering that
bugs are everywhere, and humans are scattered. Probably, bugs are more populous
in areas where humans are scarce. We
have a way of getting rid of bugs and that may be to our own detriment.
Bugs are important in the
food chain of so many other creatures.
Take birds for example. More than
90% of all small birds must feed insects to their newly hatched young as
food---even though the bird may be a seed eater when it matures. We have often watched cardinals feeding
cracked sunflower seeds to their immature offspring as if they were teaching
them how to forage on seeds when they had been reared on insects.
Here is a phoebe with a worm
that will go straight to the nest for one of the lucky nestlings.
The link between birds and
insects for food is just the tip of the iceberg. Insects need a good environment to survive to
become food for birds, and that environment usually means edible plants. Although we think of a good garden plant as
one which is insect proof, we might want to live with plants that are hosts to
insects and live with the damage to the plant that we like. Here is
a
good example of that point: In our
garden we have a fennel plant purchased years ago to be able to harvest the
bulb for use in cooking. But we never
got around to using the bulb in the kitchen and so the plant just keeps getting
more robust each year. Here it is this
year, doing its thing and now putting out seed heads.
All the upper part of the plant are the long stems and seed heads, the lower part is a filmy foliage that smells and tastes like anise. Soon, the black swallowtail butterfly will find this plant, lay eggs on the stems. What follows next is that the eggs hatch into larvae to start the life cycle of the swallowtail---that is if the birds don’t find them first. They usually do find them first. Here is a photo of the bush with many caterpillar “bugs” all over it and if they are not harvested by the birds, all the foliage will be gone in a week. This may bother gardeners, but we find it more fascinating to watch this unfold and then to buy the fennel bulbs in the store when we need them.
Here the caterpillars are at
work stripping the foliage as their food.
If
you are interested to see them in action, go to this YouTube short video we
have uploaded.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yLmteb-inxs
Here
is another example of plant to insect connection, this time in the opposite
direction as the common petunia plays host to no insects--or so it would appear. Two years ago, we planted a few seeds of
Laura Bush petunias and had a good showing of flowers. The plants went to seed in the raised beds
and the cycle repeated itself again this year when now we are overwhelmed with
petunias. But careful observation
reveals that no bugs will go anywhere near the petunias, not bees, not leaf
chewing insects, none. Even the
hummingbirds shun them despite all these blooms. Deer even turn up their noses on these
plants.
We poked around in the
literature and found that petunias are not native to the Americas, having been
imported from Africa. So, apparently these
plants don’t fit in very well to our ecosystem.
This lack of interconnectivity between plants and insects raises the
question in many botanists and entomologists about the definition of an “alien”
plant. Some proclaim that the definition
of an alien plant should not be based on whether it is introduced from outside
the country but should be based on its compatibility with other forms of life
in the area, specifically insect and lower animal life.
The Mud Dauber (
family of Sphecidae) is an interesting wasp of which there are many
species. Mud daubers build mud houses
under some structure that provides protection from rain, lay their eggs in the
cocoon- like mud houses then pack them
with spiders that they have paralyzed. They paralyze the spider by stinging it, then
they haul it to the nest and jam it into the mud house and seal it up. When the
eggs hatch, the newborn feed on the spider’s living tissue, before breaking out
of the mud nest and voila, more mud daubers.
The wasps rarely sting humans preferring to move on if their nests are
damaged.
Recently we watched a mud
dauber hauling a paralyzed spider across
the porch, up the stone wall and pack it into a crevasse where there was a mud
house. And it did all this walking
backwards knowing exactly where to deliver the live body. We are always impressed with the memory of
the mud dauber and other wasps. They
seem to sit and wait for the garage door to be opened in the morning so that
they can continue to build their nests inside the garage.
When we lived farther to the
east, and especially in Louisiana, we found that old timers painted the ceilings
of their porches sky blue. They never
had mud dauber nests on their porch ceilings, because, apparently, the mud
dauber thought it was open sky and the mud nest would not be protected from
rain. We don’t have a lot of black widow
spiders, but these spiders are their favorite food. That could be why the black widow spider is
not common.
Fire Ants (solenopsis)
and Chiggers (trombiculidae) are two nasty insects that have one
good trait, but first, the bad one. Both
fire ants and chiggers cause skin problems when they bite. Fire ants bother everyone, but chiggers seem
to affect just some people. When it is
dry, fire ants house their egg hatchery underground, but when it rains and the
ground is soaked, they move their egg hatchery above ground in the ant mounds
familiar to us. Chiggers seem to be
everywhere in the dry grass in the hot months of the year. The good trait is that a principle food of
the fire ant is the chigger, so we don’t interfere with that relationship as it’s
to our advantage. Fire ants first arrived in the USA in the 1920s from Brazil
and have since spread across most of the southern states where climate is
favorable for their growth in numbers.
Now, some hundred years
later, these ants are well established and have outnumbered native ants five to
one. Mari Sica tells us that moth balls are a good deterrent to fire ants that
may be prone to take up residence in your electrical devices like gate
controllers.
Cochineal is
an interesting and useful bug. Most
probably you have never seen a cochineal but if you have observed the white
furry looking stuff on the prickly pear cactus, you were getting close to
seeing the cochineal bug. The white
fuzzy stuff is the secretion from the cochineal, probably serves as a
protection. What makes the cochineal
interesting is that it produces a brilliant red substance that has been used
for centuries as a dye. Even today,
cochineal red is used in food coloring and dyeing of textiles. A little goes a long way, but it takes a lot
of bugs to harvest just a little bit of dye—in fact, it takes more than 70,000
bugs to make a pound of dye. See for
yourself, the next time you happen to notice the white stuff on a prickly pear,
scrape it off and crush it to see the brilliant red dye of this bug.
June Bugs are
those hard-shelled beetles that are attracted to the lights in your house in
the morning, hitting the windows making a noticeable sound. The larvae of these beetles are the common
occurring white grub found in garden soils some two or so inches below the
surface. Come late April or May, these
larvae develop into the beetle, thus completing the life cycle. These beetles are seldom harmful, but a dense
infestation might be a problem in lawns.
Apparently, this beetle is nationwide, as those in the northern states call them June Beetles,
but here in Texas we more often refer to them as May beetles.
Not a bug, but Galls
are an interesting plant reaction to a sting from certain insects of the wasp
family. Galls take on all sorts of different forms depending on the tree and
depending on the insect that created it.
The most common gall here is oak apple gall. observed on oak trees. Below is one example.
Galls are used by the insect
as a micro habitat because inside the gall is a concentration of plant
nutrients that the stinging insect uses for food for its brood. What a unique plant/insect interaction: Insect stings the plant and the plant builds
the insect a nest. And the galls are not harmful to the host plant.
Web worms are
the nemesis of pecan growers but can be controlled by letting wasps do their
job. The web is a problem for the wasps
though as the wasps have difficulty accessing the worms. The web worm is a
caterpillar that forms the web and then eats all the leaves within the
web. The worm is the larvae of a white
moth. These moths emerge in the early
summer, depositing eggs on the underside of the pecan leaf and the larvae then
eat the leaves. Beck tells the story of a pecan
farmer who learned that wasps know when the web is broken open for their
feast of the worms. When the farmer first knocked the web apart, it took the
wasps about two hours to discover the opened web. The next time he did that the wasps responded
in 15 minutes. Now all he must do is to
walk out the door with a stick toward the nest and the wasps come flying.
The nests are obvious even
from a distance.
The natural control of this
pest is by allowing the wasps, birds, and assassin bugs to do their work. It has been shown that where extensive
chemical control of wasps has occurred, web worms are more common. Over and
over, we encounter the good that the family of wasps do to control other
insects.
Also, the Cuckoo, a bird we have here
in Central Texas feasts on these web worms.
The Cuckoo is not often seen but we always hear their call off in the
higher reaches of the live oaks nearby.
Listen for their call, it is a clucking sound.
The Dung Beetle is
both legendary and industrious. This is
the dark colored beetle that collects cow and horse manure, rolls it into a
ball and then buries the balls in a nest underground. The beetle then lays eggs on the stored balls
of manure as food for the larvae that hatches.
Many have seen these beetles, head down, pushing the ball of dung toward
the spot they have chosen to bury the ball. Whatever obstacle they encounter in
their path while pushing this ball, they seem to find a way to overcome
it. Children often have fun watching the
beetle encounter a stick, stone or other obstacle and work their way around it.
Dr.
Fincher of the USDA Lab at TAMU College Station has spent most of his career
studying this beetle. He finds four main
benefits: (1) the removal of livestock
waste allowing grass to grow (2) the enrichment of soil where the dung balls
are buried (3) breaking the life cycle of livestock parasites that show up in
the manure and (4) removing the breeding medium for flying insects that harm
cattle, horses, and us.
This
celebrated beetle carries a lot of history.
It is the beetle that the Egyptians worshipped as shown by their tomb
records. The tomb of King Tutankhamen
contained a pendant showing the Sun God Scarab beetle Ra rolling a ball symbolizing
the movement of the sun across the sky.
Spiders
are scary because the Tarantula is large, the Brown Recluse is dangerous, and
the Black Widow is dangerous too. But
the Argiope is not dangerous and does make
a web with an intricate zigzag stitch across the center. Every year we have one or two that make their
fly trap and then sit and wait for their food to arrive. We observed one that was waiting for dinner
to arrive, but its web was filled with crape myrtle flower petals. Here is what this spider looks like.
The zigzag-stitched web is a giveaway feature of this
spider.
Despite
the Tarantula being large and hairy, it is relatively safe to handle,
even though we would not be the first to volunteer to do that.
The Black
Widow is poisonous and does bite readily.
It is found in out of the way places where its dark and moist. I have found most of them in nested empty
garden pots that were stored in the shade.
The Brown Recluse
is worrisome as its bite results in the destruction of tissue around the bite
and unless treated, can become a threat to the whole bite area
Now with all this, we
hope you can enjoy the bugs just a little more.
_____________Sightings____________
One of our neighbors
has reported seeing Vermilion Flycatchers hanging around their house. These
birds do summer here but are not common, so that was a good sighting. Of our three red birds, Cardinals, Tanagers
and Vermilion Flycatchers, the flycatcher is the smallest of the three, has a thin
black mask and a bit of brown on the back.
A new first here with
the successful nesting of a batch of purple martins. We built and erected a purple martin house
five years ago, and this was the first year the birds stayed to nest. Here are two of the new generation sitting on
the top of the house:
Consistently, we have
a few pairs of Painted Buntings nesting nearby.
They arrive in mid-May and leave by late summer. In the last few weeks, this male has taken a
liking to sitting in the top of a hackberry tree and serenading all those who
will listen.
Last year we came
upon some seeds for Tatumi squash and so we planted it this spring. It germinated slowly, then took off rapidly,
making lots of blossoms, but still no fruit.
Then the fruit started to show up.
It’s a good vegetable, it can be used like a summer squash or a winter
squash and we think the experiment was a success. One squash however was rather indecisive and
developed half in and half outside the deer fence. we finally had to cut it out of the fence.
Tatumi
tried travelin’ through the fence
And
never did he figger he’d grow bigger.
Alas….
When the squashes are
immature, they are green when fully mature they are pumpkin colored like these. Yell if you want seeds for next year.
