A ruthless killer battles fearsome parasitoids (and will probably lose)

I took this photo almost exactly one year ago - October 9, 2013. It is, or should I say, was the view from my office window. This shot wasn't taken from my window, but when I look down from my nearby office, this is pretty much the viewscape. I really detest vast grassy expanses of turf grass. Such a habitat is pointless, in many cases. Poaceous emerald deserts have their place in parks and other places where people gather outdoors for recreational pursuits. I accept that and have no quarrel with lawns where needed. But the country is overrun with nonnative grass. WAY too much. There is over 40 million acres of the stuff in the United States, which makes grass our biggest crop, supposedly. That's an area the size of Connecticut, Delaware, Kentucky (the Bluegrass State!), New Hampshire, and Rhode Island. Oh, we have to also add Yellowstone National Park to match the turfed over acreage of the lower 48 states.

Stupid.

The attendant loss of biodiversity - the plants and animals that make the world go 'round - is staggering. And most of it is completely and utterly unnecessary.

Here's nearly the same vista as the above photo, shot a few weeks back. I finally put my money where my mouth is insofar as the work complex's landscaping, and convinced the facility managers to install a prairie on the site of the aforementioned grassy wasteland. And bless their hearts, they did it! Many people - maybe most - are interested enough in biodiversity and doing good things for the environment that they will act in Nature's best interest when a chance presents itself. That's what happened here, and the results have been staggering. Keep in mind that the seeds of this prairie were not sown until May 21, of this year.

Major thanks go to Bob Kehres of Ohio Prairie Nursery for providing the seed, and all manner of expertise to help us get our prairie out of the ground.

Needless to say, I've been fascinated with the biological changes resulting from our little one-third acre prairie. At least once or twice a week I take the Canon outside and see what critters I can document. Where one year ago you could count on one hand the few tough animals that would utilize the lawn, it is now a veritable cornucopia of animal life.

The photo above shows a Yellow-collared Scape Moth, Cisseps fulvicollis, plundering nectar from a black-eyed susan. I made this image, and those that follow, this afternoon.

With the now abundant flowering plants providing nectar galore for pollinating insects, the predators have moved in to take advantage of the bounty. This Bold Jumping Spider, Phidippus audax (I think), glares at your narrator from atop a black-eyed susan. No dummy, the spider knows that lurking near a flower will soon produce a meal. It has been amazing to see how quickly the prey-predator food web has developed.

Last week I discovered jagged ambush bugs in the genus Phymata ensconced on the flowers of fleabane. I wrote about these recently, RIGHT HERE. Once again, I was surprised at just how rapidly these interesting insects found and colonized the brand spanking new prairie.

Anyway, sorry for the above deviations into turf grass bashing. It is this ambush bug, which I think may be Phymata fasciata (ID corrections always appreciated!), that I really want to discuss.

I strolled over to check the fleabanes where I had seen the ambush bugs last week, and quickly spotted one who had made a meal out of a tachinid fly. Note the ambush bug's long death-dealing proboscis, firmly injected into the fly's abdomen. The bug will slowly - and with great pleasure, I am sure - suck out the liquefied innards of the fly, leaving behind a desiccated husk.

This is all cool enough, but WAIT! A third insect lurks, to the right of the drama, on the ray flowers of the fleabane. It is truly tiny - so small that I didn't notice it in the field as I fixated on capturing images of the ambush bug. It wasn't until I downloaded the pictures and reviewed them that I saw the six-legged third wheel.

Who is it, and what might it be doing? My first thought was that it is a fly, and was perhaps waiting for an opportunity to drop its eggs on the fly carcass. Maybe its larvae would use that as a host. Those thoughts were quickly dispelled with a closer look - the elfin onlooker is actually a wasp!

This little wasp is too small for even my Canon's 100 mm macro, although I might have done somewhat better had I noticed the thing in the field and took direct aim. Ah well, live and learn.

Now that its identity (I think) has been established as a wasp, it's a bit easier to speculate about what is going on. The world is full of tiny parasitoid wasps that lay their eggs on all manner of insect hosts, and I figured that's what this wasp was scheming to do. A bit of searching around revealed a wasp known as Telenomus phymatae, and I wonder if that's this critter. It is a parasitoid of jagged ambush bugs, but not the adults. It seeks out freshly laid eggs of the ambush bug, and injects its eggs into the ambush bug eggs. The wasp grubs hatch first, within the host eggs, and eat them. So, if the wasp is indeed Telenomus phymatae, it is probably loitering around the ambush bugs awaiting the deposition of some eggs. Ironically, the tachinid fly is also a parasitoid, laying its eggs on some insect victim. What goes around comes around, and we've got a lot of paybacks being dealt out in this photo.

The overarching message of this post is this: plant diversity, especially native plants, spawns extraordinary animal diversity. Even right under our noses, in highly urbanized landscapes, in prairies that were planted only four and a half months ago.

GO NATIVE, and be sure to attend the 2014 Midwest Native Plant Conference.

A trio of moths, all in black

Even plants that get a bad rap as "weeds" can be mighty beneficial. In fact, one could argue that many of these so-called weeds, as long as they're native, support greater animal populations than do most of their rarer and sexier botanical kin. The plant above doesn't have much of a fan club, and is sometimes derided as a weed. It is common dogbane, or Indian-hemp, Apocynum cannabinum, an abundant and widespread species that occurs in every Ohio county, all lower 48 states, and most Canadian provinces. The plants in the photo are bursting through asphalt, a feat I see dogbane accomplishing with regularity. It's tough as nails.

Dogbane always bears watching. The small white flowers grow in dense clusters, and they are insect magnets. It seems like dogbane flowers are never without a complement of pollinators, and that often includes some interesting bugs. A soldier beetle, Chauliognathus marginatus, rests on a leaf of this plant; it had probably just worked over the flowers, or is about to.

Dogbanes, while in their own family, the Apocynaceae, butt right up against the milkweeds on the family tree, and one can see the similarities in leaf structure. Rupture a leaf, and you'll stimulate the flow of thick milky latex, just as in milkweeds. 

On a recent brief foray, I found myself in a small prairie remnant that was liberally peppered with dogbane plants. With my Nikon D7000 slung over my shoulder, I moved in to inspect the "weeds" and was quickly rewarded.

This strange-looking wasplike thing is actually a moth, and it probably hopes that you and everyone else thinks it really is a nasty stinging wasp. Mimicry of a six-legged bad boy that might pack a punishing sting is a good ploy if you are a moth that boldly flies during daylight hours, as this one does. It is a grapeleaf skeletonizer, Harrisina americana, a fairly common species whose caterpillars feed on various grapes, and Virginia creeper.

A dead giveaway that this grapeleaf skeletonizer is actually a moth are those pectinate (comblike) antennae. Other than that, the animal does a darn good job of acting the part of a wasp. In life, it lacks the forceful movements and loud buzzing flight of most wasps, though. Note the orangish-red neck collar - that's a useful feature to use to separate this species from a couple of similar day-flying moths.

This is another mostly black day-active moth, the yellow-collared scape moth, Cisseps fulvicollis. It's similar to the skeletonizer, but has a yellowish-orange collar. Scape moths look less flimsy and more beetlelike, too - they may be mimics of fireflies, which are distasteful and shunned by many predators.

The third species in this dark moth trio is the Virginia ctenucha, Ctenucha virginica (ten-oo-ka). It is probably another beetle mimic, and is most similar to the yellow-collared scape moth. Note the metallic blue upper body patch, though - a diagnostic field mark. This specimen is also enjoying the sweet nectar of dogbane.

All three of these interesting day-flying moths are on the wing now. Investigate some dogbane patches, and you'll probably find at least one of them sooner than later.