Beautiful Beetles

On Wednesday I went blacklighting with some of the other students in Insect Systematics. We set up in Box Canyon in the Santa Rita Mountains. The lights brought in a fantastic selection of insects.



This is a male Dynastes granti, one of the largest beetles in the United States. I was standing near the blacklighting sheet when I heard a large crash behind me. It turned out to be this guy landing. A female Dynastes came to the light a little later. One of the other students has both of them in a terrarium now, where they happily munch on bananas. In the wild they strip bark from ash trees to eat the sap.



In this photo Dynastes is posing with another charismatic Arizona beetle. The gorgeous green scarab on the right is Chrysina gloriosa. They feed on juniper leaves and are fairly common in the mountains at this time of year.

After packing up the blacklight equipment, we went and found spadefoot toads, a diamondback rattlesnake, a tarantula, and a gopher snake. However, I had volunteered to videotape some of our activities for an educational program so I was too busy using the expensive video camera to take any pictures of my own. Maybe I'll get another opportunity to write about snakes, tarantulas, and toads in a few weeks. They're certainly plentiful right now.

And finally, a mockingbird update. The babies all fledged, and flew away. The parents were extremely hostile toward humans and cats on the first day.

A smattering of topics

In case you were wondering, the baby mockingbirds are doing great. As far as I can tell there are three of them.



Toby has become less interested in harassing the parents, but he is happy to defend the yard against neighbor cats. I may need to supervise him more once the young birds start leaving the nest.

The monsoon is a wonderful time to be at home in Arizona. As I sit and write this a sudden rainstorm has begun and the sound is amplified by the sheet metal over the porch. Monsoon storms often bring wonderful sunsets. We watched this one from the roof.



In other news, the weeds in the front and back yards have finally been vanquished! It even looks rather nice. Now if only the weeds in the back-back yard were under control.



I mentioned before that I remembered the orange flowers in our front yard from last year at the Santa Rita Experimental Range. Last Saturday we were pleased to discover that the range is again knee-deep in a carpet of orange. I took this picture on what I hope will be my future study site.

Datura creatures

There are several sacred datura (Datura wrightii) plants in our garden, thanks to N&M who gave them to us as seedlings. This beautiful but poisinous native plant has large, fragrant white blooms at night, which attract hawkmoths.

This is one of our 8-inch flowers that bloomed last week.
Manduca sexta hawkmoths are one of the main pollinators of the plant as adults, and one of the main herbivores as caterpillars. I could go on in detail about this interesting interaction (after all, it's one of the main research focuses in our lab), but instead I thought I'd write a little bit about another peculiar herbivore I found on the datura in my yard.

What could this be?


I must admit that even with my background in insects, I was puzzled when I first saw them. Here's another shot. The green creature is holding a dark, crusty object up as a shield, quickly blocking me as I poke it with a piece of grass.



The answer is that these are Tortoise Beetle larvae (family Chrysomelidae, subfamily Hispinae.) The larvae use special appendages on their hind end to hold an 'umbrella' of excrement and shed skin above their bodies. They use this shield to quickly block predators like ants and biologists with pieces of grass.



I was very curious to find out what the pupal stage of these bizarre creatures would look like. I waited, and this is what I found:



Very attractive, isn't it! But certainly not as attractive as the adults, which have the advantage of being gold and shiny.



The fun I've had with these guys has been well worth all the small holes in my datura plants. Unfortunately, I noticed yesterday that I also have several young Manduca caterpillars now. Manduca are voracious during their last instar, and can easily eat an entire plant down to the ground. I may decide to save my plants and bring them in to the lab (where they can grow fat on lab diet and maybe participate in some pollination behavior studies).

Aha!

The reason for the recent anti-cat campaign by the mockingbirds became clear today, when I found a nest with three or four baby mockingbirds in the jasmine. This is the best photo I could take- I didn't want to upset the parents so I quickly held the camera up and snapped a picture.

Here is a picture of mom (or dad?), who came to scold me as I ate my lunch on the patio. Very ferocious, indeed.

So far I've seen them bringing caterpillars, grasshoppers, and this small lizard to the nest.

I'm not sure what to do about the cat. On the one hand, the mockingbirds clearly don't like him around and are probably stressed out by his presence. I saw one actually swoop down and smack him on the head today. However, when Toby is in the yard he will confront the neighbor cats (Max and Abby) and chase them away. Toby can't climb the trellis to the nest, but it would be very easy for any self-respecting cat with four legs. If I keep Toby inside it will only be a matter of time before Abby discovers the mockingbirds.

Return from Japan

I have been battling jet-lag for several days. I am completely incapable of sleeping until 2 or 3 am, despite my best efforts. My mind races with a million ideas. But by 3pm, I can barely keep my eyes open. So far I have reached a sort of compromise with my jet-lag, in the form of a bimodal sleep pattern. I sleep from 3 to 9, and then have a nap from 3 to 6. This is obviously not a good permanent solution, especially since I start my teaching duties next week.

We returned to Tucson after our week abroad to find our garden transformed. A jungle of green covered every inch of space, filling beds with a profusion of flowers and weeds. The grass (which we were so certain we had killed for good last spring) had become an impenetrable, tangled mass. Apparently it is possible to have a lawn in Tucson for a few months of the year without wasting any precious water on it.

Those of you who have seen our yard in other seasons will appreciate this photo:

Toby (our little 3-legged kitty) seems to especially enjoy the change in the yard. He loves to lurk in the thick vegetation and roll in the grass. Over the last two days the resident pair of mockingbirds have started a new campaign to taunt and harass him (they know he can't jump or climb, and make the most of it). Toby regards their animosity as free entertainment, and spends hours rolling under their tree and meowing at them.

The burst of monsoon vegetation brought a particularly nice surprise in the front yard. The previous owner (who was an avid and talented gardener) had apparently sown the yard with senna, orange mallow, and some kind of native large orange flower. The same plant bloomed profusely last year on the Santa Rita Experimental Range, but I'll need to pull out the plant books to find out what it is. While most houses on our street have fresh green weeds or nothing at all (depending on the diligence of the owners), our house is graced by a carpet of orange blooms.

Of course, all this new growth means that we must act quickly before the lovely garden becomes completely out of control. Before he left for the conference Andrew mowed the grass (a task that almost overwhelmed our thrift-store push mower, not to mention Andrew). I have spent many long hours on hands and knees, pulling weeds. There is something very satisfying about pulling weeds, and I have many blisters to show for it. Pulling weeds becomes particularly tempting whenever I think I should be writing my dissertation proposal. I have compromised by pulling a few weeds every time writing becomes too frustrating.

In case you are wondering, we had a fantastic time in Japan and I do intend to write all about it, with pictures. I am hoping to collaborate with Andrew on it, when he returns.