Bean Leaf Beetle: Backyard Biodiversity Project Species #7

While it may seem hard to believe, each one of these beetles is a member of the species Ceretoma trifurcata. While highly variable in color and pattern, the characteristic to look for in this species is the triangular shaped patch on the abdomen just behind the thorax.  I photographed these three beetles in my front yard, all within a area no bigger than 100 square feet.  In the plant world, flower color doesn't mean much; apparently that holds true to at least some species of beetles as well.
As I dig in deeper to this project, I'm finding more biodiversity in my yard than I could have ever expected.

-Tom

Backyard Insects to be Identified

I've been busy photographing all types of insects for the backyard biodiversity project I've began.  Here are a few things from a weekend afternoon of exploring the insects of our yard.  I will be doing my best to identify each one to species, but here's just a peek from all the different types I photographed.

Does something look familiar to you?  I'm here to learn!

-Tom

An Agalliopsis Species: Backyard Biodiversity Project Species #6

What I'm finding out about the world of insects is how relatively common species that I encounter in my backyard are poorly unknown.  This leafhopper is tiny, and supposedly there are 15 species in the genus Agalliopsis,but only two are listed on bugguide, and they look quite similar!  So for this species, as far as I'm going to get for now to identify it to genus. This one is truly tiny, probably 5 millimeters long or less!

-Tom

Twenty-Spotted Lady Beetle: BBP Species #5

I photographed this beetle larva on August 9 on the undersides of the leaves of my double flowered green-headed coneflower.  I thought it was a long shot to identify, but thank you to bugguide.net and James Bailey who confirmed that this is the larva of the twenty-spotted lady beetle, Psyllobora vigintimaculata.  The adults are brownish and white, quite different when compared to the typical red and black of the more familiar species. This photo is a particularly nice image of an adult.  Now I need to find one and photograph one- I would imagine this larva, if it survived, would be an adult now.

-Tom

Polished Lady Beetle: BBP Species #4

The polished lady beetle (Cycloneda munda) is quite the stunning little beetle, despite its lack of spots.  The milkweed that I've planted attracts many aphids, and the aphids in turn attract lady beetles.  For us native plant gardeners, we get excited when we find bugs sipping the juices of our plants.  That's the whole reason we planted them on!  Bugs feed bugs, and those bugs feed birds and many other backyard wildlife species.  The genus Cycloneda contains three species in North America, all without spots. Munda is the one species likely to be encountered in Ohio; the other two either live south or west of the buckeye state.

-Tom

Bursting from the Leaf - Backyard Biodiversity Project Mystery

I don't know what this is, but it isn't alive anymore.  Could it be the result of some type of leaf mining fly?  I'm not sure.  If you know, please let us know!  As you can see, this pupae is tiny, barely a millimeter long, taken with very high magnification.  Just look at the hairs on the undersides of those leaves!

-Tom

Spotted Cucumber Beetle: BBP Species #3

Let me start off by saying I love insects, but I don't really know much about them.  Part of the reason I'm doing this backyard biodiversity project is to learn more.  The interest in insects started because I kept seeing all kinds of creatures living on the plants that I studied, both in the field and at home.

This is a species that it quite common, and it is quite a hated pest.  Known to harm members of the squash family, I actually found several climbing on the petals of my double-flowered green-headed coneflower (Rudbeckia laciniata). They can also exhibit a green color, particularly on the thorax, but this one was primarily yellow.  Its scientific name is Diabrotica undecimpunctata,  the epithet roughly translating to "eleven spots".  The "V" shaped spot counts as one spot, apparently, but doesn't it look like it's split down the middle?  Who am I to argue!

I've been seeing this one for years nearly everywhere I go in Ohio, and now I finally know a little bit more about this relatively common inhabitant of our backyard.  To learn all about them, spending some time reading this page by the University of Florida.  They can damage crop plants in many different ways.  As far as I could tell, this is a native species.

As always, please feel free to add your experiences and knowledge about each creature I feature in the BPP series.  Thanks!

-Tom

Monarch Butterfly: BBP Species #2

We planted quite a bit of milkweed last year, courtesy of Ohio Prairie Nursery's milkweed madness seed packet. We watched as dozens of monarch caterpillars feasted, grew, pupated, and eclosed.  With monarch numbers down this year, we didn't even see a monarch until yesterday. This evening during an outside check of the weather, I looked down and found this!  How this one escaped our eyes for so long-it's a plant just outside our door-we don't know, but we are happy to finally be hosting our first monarch cat of 2016.

-Tom

Swamp Milkweed Leaf Beetle: BBP Species #1

Ah, were you expecting a orange and black beetle?  While I have seen the adult of this species a few times in our backyard, last night was the first time I saw its larva.  As you can see, this slimy looking creature was actively eating the margin of a common milkweed leaf.  I knew it must be one of the few insects that specializes on milkweed.  My first guess that it might be the larva of a milkweed beetle, but after doing a little research, I believe this is the larvae of the swamp milkweed leaf beetle, Labidoderma clivicollis.  It looks quite different from the adult!  Looking at it in this photo, I really should have touched the beetle- it appears to be wet- is the shiny body sticky?  Slippery?  Hard?  Gooey? I try not to disturb the animals I photograph, but in this case, I wish I would have explored more.

While I've photographed countless numbers of species in our backyard, now that I have started the backyard biodiversity project (let's use BBP for short), I'm going to reset and start from zero.  This is backyard biodiversity project species #1.

-Tom

The Backyard Biodiversity Project

I've been taking photos of the creatures in our backyard for some time.  I just haven't been blogging all these fascinating animals. There is an entire amazing world out there, just hiding among the native plant installations that have thrived over the last eight years since we moved here. I want to up the ante; I'm not going to just photograph these creatures, but I'm going to do my best to learn more about the insects (with the help of bugguide.net), do my best to put names on them, and to ultimately create a massive list of all the organisms that I have photographed in my quarter acre of Worthington, Ohio. How many species will I document?  1,000?  10,000?  Probably somewhere in between...

I've found the diversity of flies to be quite incredible.  While this one was encountered in Munroe Falls Ohio during are Weekend and Grandma's adventure, I thought this was the perfect image to kick off my backyard biodiversity project.



-Tom