Here’s part II of Lou Jost’s photographs taken on a single walk. As he noted yesterday:
A few weeks ago I took a walk in our Rio Anzu Reserve, in the Amazon basin, to test some macro photography techniques. The insect diversity and abundance was overwhelming; it was like the African savannah in miniature.
So, continuing on, Lou concentrated on a single orchid, sussing out the source of its color:
There were some ladyslipper orchids, Phragmipedium pearcei, along the river. Their flowers’ shapes are complex, but until that day I had never looked at them under high magnification, so I had never realized that their textures and microstructures are also very complex.
My photos showed that what looked like simple green spots on the edge of the flower’s pouch were actually made of highly specialized convoluted surfaces that gave them an almost iridescent quality.
When I got home and looked at the spots under a microscope, they were different in texture than any other part of the flower. I figured they must play an important role in pollination, and I imagined they might be imitating fly eyes to draw the pollinating fly to the flower. It wasn’t until weeks later that I learned via internet that the green spots were really imitating aphids, and the pollinator was a female syrphid fly that normally lays its eggs in aphid colonies.
Even though I was trying to concentrate on tiny things, I couldn’t resist taking my first photos ever of a Fulvous Shrike-Tanager (Lanio fulvus). This is a leader of the mixed-species bird flocks in the forest mid-story. The other birds hang out with it because it spends a lot of time watching for danger, and gives a sharp alarm call when it spots something bad. The other birds can thus concentrate more on foraging and less on watching for danger. But the Shrike-tanager is famous among ornithologists for sometimes “lying” to the flock. When another bird scares up a bug that the Shrike-tanager wants, the Shrike-tanager gives out its loud alarm call, and the other bird freezes, just long enough for the Shrike-tanager to grab the bug.
For more photos from this day’s trip, see this site.
Remarkable photos, Lou.
Thanks!
Careful, Lou, you could develop an orchid obsession, fall through the looking glass, and wind up a character in a Susan Orlean book.
Great photos, man!
I’ve already fallen through. I know some of the people in that book!
Great pictures – I think the blue headed grasshopper is from another world. The tropical jungle is a nice change, having just been outside shoveling snow.
Didn’t get much snow here last night & now it’s raining & slushy! If you read the CBC, you’d think it were the end of the world & I’m sure many drivers have forgotten how to drive on less than perfect roads, like they do every year.
Yes, it’s the constant freezing and thawing that takes away whatever fun there might be winter. If I lived strictly for climate it would not be here.
It is funny how weather presenters are always swaying about breathlessly and near choking with the excitement of the latest tweak in the weather. They put emphasis on random words to help keep you awake.
“TODAY’S totals were NEARLY one one HUNDREDTH of an inch of snow with WINDS winding up to 7 MPH! BEEEEE careful out there!!!”
I am fascinated by the elaborated details on that specimen, especially the eyes. All extant life has experienced 4 billion years of evolution, but on some lineages it seems to have been a more involved experience.
Off topic, but I am now fascinated by the evolved repair mechanisms in vertebrates. If I had known how relatively effortlessly they work, I should have broken bones before just to experience it! [Well, maybe not, some few percent of cases don’t repair too well I take it. On the other hand Evel Knievel broke the record with 400+ more or less repaired breaks…]
Lady slippers are beautiful. They are in many forests in Ontario & I remember them as a toddler hiking.
Yes, your ladyslippers are beautiful. You have about five species there; nearby Wisconsin is where I first got interested in orchids, partly because of them.
These images are great! And all on one walk.
Someone should organize a WEIT trip to the Amazon. Lou could be our guide.
That would be fun! I actually used to do that for a living when I first got here. I lived in the jungle for a year without leaving–it was an amazing experience, and it was the only way to learn all those birds! In good Amazonian forest there are 500-600 species in one little forest. It’s overwhelming.
Love the photos!
I like the Shrike-tanager that calls wolf. Will it end the same way as Aesop’s fable?
Beautiful photos. It is amazing that the orchid mimics aphids, thereby attracting female syrphid flies.
Yes, I never would have guessed that. It turns out that many Asian ladyslippers do the same thing, though they are in a different genus. Their green spots are on the staminode rather than the lip. Maybe both evolved this strategy independently due to some shared pre-adaptation that involved syrphid flies?
Orchid parts are basically unknown to me, and I needed to look up some pictures to navigate my way around them. The 2nd picture is basically upside down, and I guess the furry things are the anthers with pollen, and the female stigma is also in that same vicinity. So the strategy is to get the fly to enter the enclosure, and hunt around for aphids while meanwhile accidentally picking up pollen -or- transfer pollen. Is that about right?
Mark, the first picture shows the orchid in its natural orientation. The second picture is the view from above, looking down. The only place where there are fake aphids is on the white folds above the lip, but you are probably right, the fly hunts around and falls or walks into the pouch. The upper margin of the pouch is folded down so that the fly cannot just walk out of the pouch. It gets guided towards the only two exits (one on each side of the stigma).
The thing with the thick black eyelashes is not the anther but the staminode, whose purpose in all of this is unclear. The actual anthers and pollen are the creamy white round things visible under the staminode in the cross-section photo.
Orchids are complicated!
Lovely orchid, and nice story to go with it.