Creatures of the night delight avid fans

Female Luna moth

Columbus Dispatch

August 21, 2016

NATURE
Jim McCormac

NOTE: Sometimes people ask me why I pick certain headlines for my columns. The answer: I don't. Editors craft newspaper headlines, not the reporters and writers.

One of Ohio’s stranger natural-history events had its origins in a ditch in Adams County. In July 2012, John Howard, Dave Wagner and I were in said ditch, marveling at some extraordinary moth. (I’ve forgotten the species.)

Howard is a technician for General Electric and naturalist extraordinaire. Wagner is a professor at the University of Connecticut and author of the "Caterpillars of Eastern North America" (Princeton, $29.95). We had been conducting field work in this Ohio River county.

When we found the moth, it triggered a discussion about the fabulous diversity of these winged creatures. If we could expose more people to the wonders of moths, we reasoned, more people would become enamored with natural history.

Mothapalooza was born.

A call to Mary Ann Barnett, a natural-history enthusiast and organizer extraordinaire, bore fruit. She was instrumental in shaping the conference.

By early 2013, our moth-centric conference was ready and slated for a June weekend. We hoped to attract perhaps 30 to 40 diehards. In all, about 150 attended the inaugural event, far exceeding expectations.

That first conference was based at the Lodge at Shawnee State Park, smack in the midst of biodiversity-rich Scioto and Adams counties. The following year we moved to Burr Oak State Park in Morgan County, and the third and fourth conferences have been back at Shawnee.

The most recent Mothapalooza took place the first weekend of August, with another full house. Some of the region’s premier moth experts shared their knowledge with participants, and generous sponsors, in particular the Ohio Department of Natural Resources' Division of Wildlife, provide critical support.

Although Mothapalooza features wonderful speakers, vendors, artists and others, field trips to see moths are the core of the conference. Nocturnal excursions on Friday and Saturday nights departed at 9:45 pm, and some attendees didn't return to the lodge until 3:00 am. We have to keep moths’ hours.

Moth stations are situated in the wild lands of Shawnee State Forest and adjacent Edge of Appalachia Preserve. A station consists of hung sheets illuminated by specialized lights. They’re irresistible to moths, which fly to the sheets for easy observation.

Perhaps 1,500 moth species occur in this region, and their diversity is dazzling. Species range from bat-sized imperial moths to micro moths scarcely visible to the unaided eye. The collective cast is painted in a rainbow of other colors.

Two major factors have spiked interest in moths. In 2012, the "Peterson Field Guide to Moths of Northeastern North America" was released, exposing a huge new audience to the magic of moths.

The meteoric growth and increased accessibility of digital cameras is the other factor. Moths are fabulous subjects, and relatively easy to photograph. Many images from Mothapalooza 2016 can be found at my blog.

For more information, visit www.mothapalooza.org.

Naturalist Jim McCormac writes a column for The Dispatch on the first, third and fifth Sundays of the month. He also writes about nature at www.jimmccormac.blogspot.com .

Photography Workshop, Lakeside, Ohio: September 20-22

It'll be fun, and full of a wide array of interesting subjects. All levels welcome! Learning to get that camera off auto mode will do wonders for your photography, whether you use a point & shoot or an advanced SLR. CLICK HERE for workshop details and registration information. Feel free to email me - jimmccormac35 AT gmail.com with any questions.

A brutal fate (or why you shouldn't come back as a caterpillar)

Last Saturday, August 13, the Midwest Native Plant Society sponsored a one-day workshop on pollinators. It was well attended, with over 140 participants. The speakers were great, fun was had, and there were field trips following the indoor sessions.

The venue was the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers' fabulous visitor center at Caesar Creek Lake in Warren County. We really like holding events at this place, as the conference room is perfect for groups of up to 175 or so people, AND one only need step outside the doors to get into interesting habitat. As proof, one of our field trip leaders, John Howard (striped shirt, back to camera) shows a group a huge female Dobsonfly on the wall by the doors. There was also a stunning Cloudless Sulphur butterfly in the raised flower bed, near that rock.

At the end of the day, a couple of us were poking around the woodland edge near the visitors center when I spotted a Redbud, Cercis canadensis. As this tree is often productive for finding various slug moth caterpillars, we went over to inspect its foliage. It didn't take long before I spotted one of our most striking caterpillars, the Saddleback, Acharea stimulea. It's always a crowd-pleaser.

NOTE: The Saddleback in this photo is a proxy for the actual specimen that we found. I imaged the animal above two years ago in southern Ohio. Scroll on and you'll see why I used a substitute image to show what one of these cats looks like.

Here is the actual Saddleback that we found on the Redbud last Saturday. It's dead, and its body bristles with the cocoons of a Braconid wasp. There are so many cocoons festooning the unfortunate cat's body that it took me a minute to realize what species we were looking at. To top off the predatorial assault, there are even a few tachinid fly eggs on the body for good measure.

Braconid wasps and tachinid flies, among others, are parasitoids. Parasitoid insects such as these generally kill their hosts. One of these flies or wasps lays its eggs on - or injects them into - the victim. The eggs hatch quickly, and the tiny grub begins boring its way through the host's body, consuming non-vital tissues at first. Obviously, as evidenced by the photo above, many such larvae might occupy a host. The parasitoids cleverly avoid consuming the organs that allow the caterpillar to continue to remain mobile and thus better elude other predators, such as birds. Finally, in a grisly last hurrah, the larvae finish off the victim and burst from the dead husk and spin tiny cylindric cocoons.

It takes a few days for the wasps to pupate and emerge from their cocoons. I saw an opportunity to attempt to make images of the emergence, and took the caterpillar and its gruesome hitchhikers and placed the whole shebang in a clear vial. I tried to check on the occupants every hour or so to see if anyone was hatching. Today (August 15) was the day.

I had the vial in my office, and when I checked it around 10 am, a few wasps were flying about within. An inspection of the cocoons revealed that most appeared ready to hatch, but in spite of regular monitoring, no more emerged during the day.

I left the office around 5:15, vial and camera in hand. When I reached my car in the parking lot, I took one more look before stowing everything. Probably two dozen wasps were flying about! Perhaps my moving the vial jostled them into action, I don't know, but I rushed back to the building to create some images of the wasps emerging.

It doesn't take long for one to pop out. As the pupa matures into an adult wasp, the outer edges of the summit (lid) of the cocoon get thinner and more fragile. The wasp then apparently chews a very neat incision around the summit of the cocoon, and when the time is right, it pushes up and pops the lid off. From the time that I could detect an obvious movement of the lid in the case of the wasp above, it was probably only 30-45 seconds before it had broken completely free of the cocoon. The three cocoons to the right of the wasp still have their occupants. Other cocoons have the lids popped and we can see the almost perfectly circular shape of the lid.

Just seconds after emergence, a braconid wasp takes stock of its new world. After a brief run-around, it took wing and vanished.

Making images of these insects was not easy. The wasps are probably only 2-3 millimeters in length - smaller than can be effectively dealt with by using a "normal" macro lens such as my Canon 100 mm. Thus, I resorted to the tricky but useful Canon MP-E 65mm "mega" macro lens, which magnifies up to 5x life size. But this lens is not forgiving, and very hard to use on objects that are moving. It has no focusing system; the operator just moves the camera back and forth to focus. Depth of field is extremely shallow, even at f/16 (what these images were made at), and front of the lens flash is essential. And it is nearly essential that the camera be firmly braced in some way.

But if all goes passingly well, we can see into a micro world that is far too small to be visible to the unaided eye.

A wasp gives brief pause after a few wing shakes and a spot of grooming. An instant later it was gone. The spearlike spikes to the right of the wasp are part of the caterpillar's armament of stinging spines. Saddlebacks are said to have a very painful sting, but while such weaponry may work on birds and other larger predators, it is not effective against small parasitoid insects.

The wasp family Braconidae is immense, and undoubtedly includes scores of species as yet undescribed. I have no idea what species these wasps are, or even the genus. Identification of species in this group is the bailiwick of specialized experts, and I suspect specific identification isn't even possible in most cases without a specimen in hand. If anyone reading this can shed more light regarding identification, please let me know.

I captured this wasp just as it was ready to take wing. Note the dark stigma along the leading edge of the forewings.

A fate such as documented above is very common in the caterpillar world. Those of us who regularly hunt for caterpillars are quite used to seeing victims bristling with wasp cocoons, and/or the shells of empty tachinid fly eggs stuck to their exteriors.

Very little in Nature is Disneyesque.

Ohio Sustainable Landscapes Symposium: August 27

Mark your calendars for Saturday, August 27. That's the date of the 5th annual Ohio Sustainable Landscapes Symposium, hosted by Dawes Arboretum. The sprawling arboretum, located near Newark in Licking County, is a beautiful place to visit at any season and is the venue for the symposium.

Keynote speaker is John Watts, resource manager for Franklin County Metro Parks. John has been a driving force behind much of the park district's large-scale wetland and prairie restoration. Following the speakers, field trips will visit various habitats within the arboretum. It's sure to be an interesting and educational event.

For complete details and registration information, GO HERE.

Mothapalooza 2016 a big success!

Last weekend saw the 4th annual iteration of Mothapalooza, an event that has developed a strong following amongst natural history enthusiasts in its few years of existence. Over 160 attendees were present, and we filled the entire Shawnee State Park lodge - all 50 rooms and 25 cabins for the entire weekend. Mothing ecotourism, imagine that.

This year we had people from eleven states, and Canada. The attendees who came the furthest hailed from Mission, Texas - over 1,200 miles as the moth flies (and not many can fly that far). A star-studded cast of luminaries of the entomological world were with us, including Doug Tallamy and some of his students. Seabrooke Leckie, coauthor of the 2012 Peterson Field Guide to Moths of Northeastern North America was in the house, and new for this year was the inimitable Sam Jaffe, founder of the Caterpillar Lab in Keene, New Hampshire. Steve Gettle, one of North America's leading natural history photographers, was also there. Entomologists of top caliber, such as Dave Horn, Dave McShaffrey, Diane Brooks, Mike Gilligan, Derek Hennen, Rachel Shoop, Greg Raterman, Linda Romine, and Candace Talbot provided expertise in the field.

Mothapalooza has much help from sponsors, including the Ohio Division of Wildlife, Cedar Bog Association, Midwest Native Plant Society, Cincinnati Museum, Flora-Quest, Wild Ones, National Wildlife Federation, Ohio Prairie Nursery, Crane Hollow Preserve, Ohio Lepidopterists, Monarch Pathways, Ohio Chapter of The Nature Conservancy, and National Moth Week.

The cast of volunteers is huge, and this lot includes many experts in the field of lepidoptera who generously donate their time. Logistics at this event are rather bizarre, with field trips departing on Friday and Saturday nights around 9:45 and often the last groups roll in around 2:30-3:00 am. Coordinating the complexities with precision is Mary Ann Barnett, our conference CEO. She puts in TONS of work to see that Mothapalooza sails smoothly. Following is the list of people who serve as invaluable volunteers and I hope I don't miss anyone!

Kyle Bailey, Kim Banks, Mary Ann Barnett, Chris Bedel, Craig Biegler, Maria Bon, Natalie Boydston, Deb Bradley, Diane Brooks, Kay Clark, Jim Davidson, Jen Dennison, Nate Donat, Judy & Francis Ganance, Ann Geise, Steve Gettle, Mike Gilligan, Derek Hennen, Scott Hogsten, Dave Horn & Roz Horn, John Howard, Sam Jaffe, Olivia Kittle, Amanda Kriner, Jason Larson and his crew, Seabrooke Leckie, Bethany Linert, Katie Lloyd, Martin McAllister, Rich McCarty, Jim McCormac, Kathy McDonald, Dave McShaffrey, Gina & Tom Patt, Greg Raterman, Linda Romine, Elisabeth Rothschild, Marcey Shafer, Colleen Sharkey, Rachel Shoop, MaLisa Spring, Candace Talbot, Doug Tallamy, Brad Von Blon, Robyn Wright-Strauss, and Mark Zloba.

I don't take all that many photos at Mothapalooza, being burdened with various duties, but I do manage to click off some documentary shots and a sampling of those follows...

The bread and butter of Mothapalooza is the mothing stations, which are placed in the wildlands of the sprawling Shawnee State Forest and adjacent Edge of Appalachia Preserve. By illuminating sheets with specialized lights, moths are drawn in, sometimes in large numbers. This is a station high on a Shawnee ridge known as Copperhead Lookout. Via a sophisticated transportation system of shuttles coordinated by Elisabeth Rothschild, participants are ferried between stations.

As nearly everyone who attends Mothapalooza has some sort of camera, there must be many thousands of moth photos taken over the weekend. Moths are wonderful subjects. This is a Tuliptree Beauty, Epimecis hortaria.

Blackberry Looper,  Chlorochlamys chloroleucaria, which is about as large as your thumbnail.

Cherry Scallop Shell, Hydria prunivorata, with its intricate pattern of wavy lines.

Head on with an Isabella Tiger Moth, Pyrrharctia isabella. It's caterpillar is far better known than the moth - the Woolly-bear.

The giant silkmoths always are crowd-pleasers, and this Regal Moth, Citheronia regalis, is among the largest of this crowd.

Luna Moths, Actias luna, are always popular. Sharp-eyed Dan Kenney found this one in the darkened forest while exploring near one of the mothing sheets. It is a female, as evidenced by the skinny antennae.

Another giant silkmoth, this one called the Tuliptree Silkmoth, Callosamia angulifera. It is a male, as easily told by its giant fernlike antennae.

Sphinx moths are always a highlight of the mothing sheets, and we get nice numbers and diversity of sphinxes. This one is a Laurel Sphinx, Sphinx kalmiae.

All moths are intricately beautiful upon close inspection, but some are exceptional. This is a Pink-bordered Yellow, Phytometra rhodarialis.

The caterpillar of this species, the Funerary Dagger Moth, Acronicta funeralis, is one of the Holy Grails, the Paddle Caterpillar. I've written about this cat HERE.

The Hebrew, Polygrammate hebraeicum. Moths such as this, with incredibly intricate patterning, make for fun macro portraits. You should be able to find a face or two hiding among the lines.

Always popular is the Zebra conchylodes, Conchylodes ovulalis.

I could and should do a specific post on this little beauty, the Sooty-winged Chalcoela, Chalcoela iphitalis. Its caterpillars parasitize the larvae of paper wasps!!

The Crocus Geometer, Xanthotype sospeta, is rather butterfly-like in appearance.

A fabulous bird-dropping mimic, and there are many rivals, is the Schlaeger's Fruitworm Moth, Antaeotricha schlaegeri. From afar, this mating pair resembled a fresh sparrow splat.

Looking like little more than an old piece of dead plant matter is the Coppery Orbexilum Moth, Hystrichophora loricana. It was a target of one of our daytime field trips. This species is very rare, only known from three states I believe, and only where its host plant, Scurf Pea, Orbexilum onobrychis, occurs.

Robberflies have little concern for rare species, and this Efferia aestuans robberfly has taken out and is eating the aforementioned Coppery Orbexilum Moth!

Caterpillars face their own perils. We found this Saddled Prominent, Heterocampa guttivitta, being attacked by Formica integra ants on another daytime field trip.

Everyone loved Sam Jaffe and were dazzled by his knowledge. I was fortunate to spend field time with him on the Thursday before the conference began, and was amazed at how he would find caterpillars from clues left by their feeding habits. He spotted this tiny early instar Red-spotted Purple caterpillar, Limenitis arthemis, a long ways off.

Sam also brought along some wonderful caterpillars to share with the group, including this Northern Thorn, Selenia alciphearia, which is an outstanding stick mimic.

Several of the bizarre Monkey Slug caterpillars turned up on field trips. It morphs into the Hag Moth, Phobetron pithecium.

Looking for caterpillars is nearly as much fun - if not more - than watching the moths at the sheets. This spectacular Io Moth caterpillar, Automeris io, was found by Dan Kenney and his blacklight flashlight near one of the sheets.

We're still sorting out details and dates for Mothapalooza '17, and I'll report on that when all is settled.

17-year brood of cicadas becomes feast for Ohio birds

A periodical cicada, photographed in Ross County

Columbus Dispatch

August 7, 2016

NATURE
Jim McCormac

William Bradford, a five-time governor of Plymouth Colony in Massachusetts, was perhaps the first European to describe one of the world’s most incredible insect irruptions.

In 1633, the Pilgrims had been in the New World for 13 years and probably thought they had learned much about their adopted land. Surprises still waited.

That year saw the emergence of a brood of 17-year periodical cicadas in the Plymouth area. Bradford wrote the following in his "Of Plymouth Plantation," which documented early Pilgrim life: “ ... all the month of May, there was such a quantity of a great sort of flyes like for bignesss to wasps or bumblebees, which came out of holes in the ground … and ate green things, and made such a constant yelling noise as made all the woods ring of them, and ready to deaf the hearers.”

Periodical cicadas are far better understood today than in Bradford’s time. It took time to sort out the complex life cycle of these strange bugs, though. Nearly two centuries after the Pilgrims’ cicada encounter, Dr. Samuel Hildreth of Marietta, Ohio, began to ferret out the mysteries of these mostly subterranean insects.

Today, scientists have largely unraveled the mysteries of periodical cicadas. They spend almost their entire existence underground feeding on sap from tree roots. After 17 years, the nymph cicadas drill to the surface and transform into adults. The males then proceed to sing, creating the din that attracts so much attention.

The six-legged horde lasts a little longer than a month, beginning in late May and culminating in females depositing eggs within tree branches. These branches eventually drop to the ground, and the fledgling nymphs bore into the ground.

The periodic outbreaks vary from region to region, and each is numbered. Ohio hosts four broods, and 2016 saw the emergence of Brood V, which extends over almost the entire eastern half of the state.

For birds, the cicada emergence is like entomological M&M’s dropping from the sky. Almost every species that can catch the big bugs will eat them. I saw robins and red-winged blackbirds deftly plucking cicadas from the air.

The Ohio Ornithological Society queried its members and documented cicada feeding by 44 bird species. These included all our woodpeckers, the ring-billed gull, the screech owl, the Eastern bluebird and two species of raptors.

To me, the most interesting avian response involved cuckoos. We have two species — the yellow-billed and black-billed cuckoos — and both seemed to skyrocket in numbers. I saw or heard them everywhere I went in cicada country, sometimes five or six simultaneously.

Cuckoos apparently invade areas of cicada irruptions en masse to take advantage of the food bounty. They will even become brood parasites: Female cuckoos produce excess eggs that will be dumped in other birds’ nests.

Residents living within Brood V boundaries will enjoy 16 years of tranquility. But brace yourselves for 2033.

Naturalist Jim McCormac writes a column for The Dispatch on the first, third and fifth Sundays of the month. He also writes about nature at www.jimmccormac.blogspot.com.

Salt Marsh Moth: Carpet-bombing reproduction strategy

A Salt Marsh Moth, Estigmene acrea, peeks around a corner at the camera. Were it the size of a swan, we'd be terrified. As it is, most of us probably think it's cute.

Despite the geographically inappropriate name, this species is common throughout Ohio, including urban haunts such as where I dwell. I made the image above back in 2012, in the shadow of downtown Columbus's skyscrapers. They also appear from time to time at my nightlights.

After returning from some late night errand on the evening of July 27, I noticed a female Salt Marsh Moth had fluttered into the sphere of my porch light. When I left for work early the next morning, it was still present, firmly ensconced in a sheltered spot near the front door.

When I returned home that evening (July 28), big things had happened. The female moth had dumped eggs galore. I estimate (too lazy to count them all, but have at it if it tickles your fancy) about 400 of the tiny beadlike eggs. She very carefully squirts the miniscule eggs out like some sort of lepidopteran assembly line worker, depositing them in neat, tightly packed rows. The eggs are somewhat viscous, and adhere firmly to the substrate.

A glance around revealed a male had joined her, apparently during the day while I was gone. He, of course, is a necessity for reproduction. Moths can be exceptionally good at locating members of the opposite sex via pheromones. Highly sensitive receptors in their antennae allow the males to unerringly navigate to females, even if they are considerable distances away.

I was curious to observe the hatching of the caterpillars, and figured it would only be three or four days before they popped forth. Sure enough, when I arrived home on the evening of August 1, the eggs had noticeably darkened, and it looked like the hatching was eminent. When I checked on them around 9:30 that evening, caterpillars were busting loose.

Brand new first instar caterpillars wriggle loose from their eggs. At this point, they are incredibly small, perhaps a millimeter or so in length. Most people, if they noticed them at all, would probably not recognize the little larvae for what they are. They'll grow like weeds, at least those that successfully run the predatorial gauntlet. One of these caterpillar will molt five times, each time emerging larger than before. Each stage between molts is termed an instar. When it reaches the last instar, it'll be hundreds of times more massive than at this point.

As the night wore on, the eruption of caterpillars grew more intense. When I made this image - probably around 11 pm - a great many had already chewed their way free. Nearly all of the rest were well on their way. In this photo, you can see caterpillars largely free of the shell, eggs whose occupants have already escaped, and lots of eggs with the cats actively chewing their way out.

Making acceptable images of this Lilliputian scene was no easy feat, in large part because the moth had placed the eggs in a tough to access spot. I couldn't use a tripod to stabilize my rig for ultra-crisp exposures. For the last image, I used Canon's remarkable MP-E 65mm mega-macro lens. It can produce stunning images of the tiniest subjects, but demands dead still stabilization which was hard to achieve in this situation. Nonetheless, watching the cats emerging through the microscope-like view offered by this lens was cool. I could see them moving inside the opaque eggs, then suddenly a tiny hole would appear. The caterpillar would rapidly chew its way out at that point, taking only a few minutes or so to free itself once it first opened a hole.

The little caterpillars will face many perils, and most won't survive the predatory gauntlet. They've got to reach suitable food plants - many acceptable host plants are nearby - and eat and grow while avoid being eaten themselves. In spite of their best efforts, there will be near complete mortality. David Wagner, caterpillar expert and author of Caterpillars of Eastern North America, estimates that for many moth species larval mortality is about 99%. This is why many moths produce so many eggs. It's necessary in order to ensure that a few of them make it all the way to adulthood. Those that don't make it serve a vital purpose, too - they are part of Nature's complex food chain, and fuel a great many other animal species.