Tag: insect

Uresiphita reversalis

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Uresiphita reversalis

A and I explored Santa Ynez Canyon for the first time since the Palisades Fire burned through a year ago. There’s a lot of regrowth and things are looking pretty good. We were excited to see a lot of young Humboldt lily plants; we’ll for sure return in late spring to see the flowers.

I spotted some caterpillars of the Genista Broom Moth munching on lupins. Genista caterpillars feed primarily on acacias and members of the pea family, including brooms (Genista spp.), Scotch broom, Texas mountain laurel (Sophora secundiflora), blue wild indigo or false indigo (Baptisia australis), and lupines. These caterpillars ingest and store alkaloids from their host plants, making them bitter—and sometimes toxic—to mammals, birds, and some insect predators (so definitely don’t eat them!).

Tipuloidea

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Tipuloidea

This morning there was a crane fly on the outside of the window, allowing me a view of its ventral side. Interestingly, it had another teensy insect on its leg — it was so small that I couldn’t tell if it was tangled or what. Was it a baby crane fly? How big are they when they metamorphose into adults?

In some places, crane flies are called mosquito hawks or “skeeter-eaters,” despite the fact that they don’t prey on adult mosquitoes or other insects. Adults have a lifespan of 10 to 15 days. The larvae of crane flies are commonly known as leatherjackets, and usually feed on decaying plant matter.

Crane flies first emerged in the Middle Triassic period, approximately 245 million years ago, making them one of the oldest known groups of flies. To date, scientists have described over 15,500 species across more than 500 genera.

glass house mountains

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glasshousemtns

The Glass House Mountains are a group of thirteen hills that rise sharply from a plain on Queensland’s Sunshine Coast. The mountains lie within the traditional lands of the Jinibara and Gubbi Gubbi people. First Nations Australians hold a rich legend surrounding these mountains, with Mt Beerwah being especially significant as the “mother” of the range.

Both Indigenous groups request that visitors refrain from climbing Beerwah and Tibrogargan out of respect for their sacred importance, a call they have voiced publicly since the mid-1990s, to little avail. In Gubbi Gubbi tradition, climbing Mt Beerwah is believed to bring bad luck.

My daughter and I did not climb Mt Tibrogargan—we circumnavigated its base, and saw some really cool invertebrates, flowers, and birds, as well as views of more distant mounts.

Pulchriphyllium pulchrifolium

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What a beauty! In fact, the scientific name translates as “Beautiful foliage, beautiful leaf”. There are 80+ extant species in the Phylliidae family, ranging from as far east as the Seychelles in the Indian Ocean, throughout the Australasian region, to as far west as Fiji in the Southern Pacific. They are some of the most remarkably camouflaged mimics in the animal kingdom. A leaf insect doesn’t just look like its habitat; when it walks, it rocks back and forth, mimicking a real leaf being blown by the wind. And its eggs look like seeds. Amazing.