Readers’ wildlife photos

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Today we have some arthropod photos from regular Mark Sturtevant, whose IDs and captions are indented. You can enlarge the photos by clicking on them.

Hello again from Eastern Michigan. Here are various insects and spiders that I had photographed in my area from two summers ago. My last post left us at a very productive park near where I work, and this post starts with some things that I’d found during that same outing.

We start with a boldly marked Stink Bug called the Anchor Stink Bug (Stiretrus anchorago).

The field in this park always has numerous Chinese Mantids (Tenodera sinensis). This being early August, they had not yet reached adult-hood so here is a nymph. By early fall I can expect to see many huge adults in the field. It seems guaranteed. I suspect that some years ago, someone had set out many of their oothecae (egg pods), and this thriving population remains the result.

Overlooking the field was a hardwood forest, and I was quite pleased that many interesting kinds of critters were in it. Among these were weird planthoppers from the family Derbidae, which are one of the many good things found under tree leaves. These lack common names, so I gave them my own. First, here is what I call the Flat Derbid (Anotia uhleri) because when fully at rest they spread their wings out flat, making them resemble a small translucent moth. This one was slightly disturbed by my attentions so it had gone into a more alert posture. Although Derbids can jump and fly like other planthoppers, they are rather placid in nature so they are easy to photograph when handled with care. The prominent thingies on the head are its antennae:

The next one is what I call the Red Derbid (Apache degeeri). This is my favorite Derbid, and I found several of these that day. Its antennae are long and squiggly, making it look like it has some kind of weird face. There is a third species that I call the White Derbid. It is nearly the twin of the Red Derbid, but it’s mostly white. These are found under tree leaves that are farther to the south:

The woods were full of orb webs, and most of those belonged to an odd but quite common spider called the Spined Micrathena (Micrathena gracilis). These pea-sized spiders are pretty helpless when displaced outside of their web, but they are quite skillful when in their web and of course they swiftly build their large orb webs at night when they are basically blind:

Among these spiny weirdos I was amazed to find a striking color variant, as shown in the next picture. I had to take this one home for staged pictures! That is one spider that belongs on a heavy metal music album cover!:

The remaining pictures came from other area parks. As I am still feeling spidery after that last one, here is our largest spider, the Fishing Spider (Dolomedes scriptus). The linked picture gives you an idea of their size. Fishing Spiders hunt near and on water, and this one was found along a river bank. This lady had carried her egg sac to the top of a plant, and she is guarding her recently hatched spiderlings in a web nursery. You can see the mass of babies in the background. Fishing Spiders can be irritable at this time, but she was not at all aggressive so I had no trouble taking a wide-angle macro picture. Although the composition does not suggest it, the lens had to pretty much touch the spider since the working distance for wide-angle macro is extremely short:

I have some odds-and-ends remaining, but I will finish with an interesting one.

Next up is an Ailanthus Webworm Moth (Atteva aurea). These small moths have expanded their range northward since they have accepted the invasive Ailanthus or Tree of Heaven as a host plant. If one plays with the lighting, as I have done here, one can get a bit of iridescent blue out of the black markings on the wings:

Next up is a Scaly Bee Fly (Lepidophora lepidocera). Adult Bee Flies feed on nectar, and the larvae are either parasitic or predatory on other insects, depending on the species:

Here are some of our local wasps. First is our native Northern Paper Wasp, Polistes fuscatus, followed by an Eastern Yellowjacket, Vespula maculifrons. These are of course social wasps:

Next up is a White-banded Potter Wasp, Ancistrocerus albophaleratus. Potter wasps are solitary, and they build a mud-pot nest which they will provision with paralyzed arthropods like caterpillars or spiders, depending on the species:

The above wasps all belong to the family Vespidae, which can be immediately recognized because their front wings are folded lengthwise into a V in cross-section (V is for Vespidae).

The next insect looks like a lovely green-eyed bee, but I soon realized it lacked certain bee characters and so it had to be a wasp. It took a while, but I finally identified it as belonging to the family Crabronidae, and the genus Tachytes – that is all I know. These solitary wasps raise their young in burrows, provisioning them with paralyzed grasshoppers or katydids:

The last insect is rather comical and I don’t understand what it wants. This is a Pixie Robber Fly (Beameromyia sp.). Robber Flies are of course predatory. I occasionally see this species drawn to the porch light at night, as this one was, and for some reason they really want to stand on their head. I managed to coax this one onto a stick for pictures, and while I would tip and turn the stick to get it into frame, it would immediately adjust its stance so that it remained as you see it here. I have no idea why: