Pretty blue-eyed grass is actually an iris, not a grass. It’s putting on a good show around here right now. No Chumash uses were recorded for this plant, but the Ohlone used an infusion of the roots and leaves as a cure for indigestion and stomach pain.
It was good to be back with Trisha on Youtube last Thursday night. I learned some new words and cicada body parts. She also told us about the Massospora cicadina fungus that turns cicadas into “flying salt shakers of death”. Amazing(ly gross).
The citrus cicada is found in the south west US (CA-AZ-UT-NV). (Trisha’s specimen was collected in Mesquite, NV.) They are not one of the 13- or 17-year cicadas; these ones have a life span of 3-4 years from egg to adult death.
I learned something new about insect tootsies today.
There are sooooo many golden orb weavers (Trichonephila edulis) here in the Australian sub-tropics at this time of year; every garden sports half a dozen or more, it seems. Their tangled webs are large, strong and sticky, so one needs to be careful when walking outside in the dark. The spider’s bite is not venomous, though it can cause pain and swelling. Perhaps you’d like to try biting back: edulis means edible. The spider has apparently been considered a delicacy in Papua New Guinea and New Caledonia, plucked by the legs from its web and lightly roasted over an open fire.
The koala (Phascolarctos cinereus) on the other hand, is much harder to spot. So I was pretty happy when all my neck-craning paid off this afternoon, down by the creek.
Cali spotted a highly reflective chrysalis in the garden, which brought us all running. Turns out it’s the pupa of the Common Crow Butterfly, Euploea corinna. I’m hoping I’m still here when it metamorphoses.
Sunburst diving beetles are aquatic, though they can fly. They are found in Southern California, southern Utah, Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, and Mexico. They inhabit various slow-moving freshwater habitats, especially shallow, temporary or intermittent pools and creeks with little or no aquatic vegetation. When their water source dries up they will fly to a new one.
They prey upon and scavenge other aquatic insects, snails, young fish, tadpoles, and mosquito larvae and pupae. The distinctive yellow spots serve as a warning sign to predators that the insect can release a foul tasting chemical from specialized glands found behind the insect’s head.
Source of the ‘mating wars’ info above: Trisha Nichols and Science Daily. I liked Susan’s comment during the livestream: “Guys, if your lady passes out underneath you, you are doing it wrong!”
Wedge-shaped beetles live a part of their life cycle as a parasite on other insects, most commonly bees or wasps.
The beetle lays its eggs on a flower. The eggs hatch almost immediately into small larvae that lie in wait for a visiting bee. The larva crawls onto the bee and rides it back to the hive, where it dismounts and seeks a cell occupied by a bee larva. It then enters the body of the bee larva and waits until the bee larva pupates. It eats the entire pupa, then pupates in its turn and completes its metamorphosis before emerging from the hive to mate and lay eggs. Clever? Creepy? You decide.
At least eight different gull species hang out at Malibu Lagoon, and telling them apart isn’t always easy. For starters, they change their colouration every year for the first three or four years, and their summer outfits might differ from their winter ones. But setting aside the juvenile years, I’m going to try to learn how to identify the adults, even if they look very similar to a casual glance. These two, the Western and California gulls, look pretty much the same year round, so I’m starting with them. I’m honing in on the subtle differences between the two, which admittedly can only be seen close up. More pairs to come as I get around to it.
Even though Trisha is an entomologist, not an arachnologist, sometimes she treats us to a spider under the microscope.
Long-jawed orb-weavers vary in appearance, but those most commonly found are long-legged, thin-bodied spiders. When at rest, they may cling lengthwise along a twig or blade of grass, holding on with the short third pair of legs while the long pairs of legs are extended. They typically live in meadows near water, and around the banks of waterways (rivers, lakes, swamps), usually on low-hanging branches and reeds. These spiders will bite if threatened, but the bite is not harmful to humans.
You’d think a bark-gnawing beetle would eat bark, but nope. It eats beetles that eat bark. Go figure.
hashiworks 