Is it a yellow jacket wasp or not?

Whenever an insect lands on you, it is time to pay attention and figure out if there is going to be a problem! Is there going to be a bite or sting or just a tickle with no further consequences?

I recently noticed a scary-looking small bug on my leg while biking and decided to check this out since it strongly resembled one of our most feared wasps, the yellow jacket. Now yellow jackets are not to be trifled with as I have learned several times when I have had to deal with their formidable nests. They are fierce and have a strong sting and an attitude to boot. On closer inspection I realized that although this bug (see photo of syrphid fly) is a close mimic of the yellow jacket wasp, it is in fact a fly. How did I figure that out? I look at the wings and can see that there is only one pair of wings (wasps have two which fold back). The eyes in flies are larger and placed differently and the antennae are shorter. If you can see the mouth, flies have sucking or piercing mouth-parts whereas wasps have chewing mouth-parts. Flies also behave somewhat differently - for example this bug was drinking sweat from my leg- in an apparent attempt to pick up some salt/sodium which is lacking in their mostly herbivorous diet. With some practice you will be able to make this distinction too, so do not just dismiss the swarm of bugs flying around you in Summer-time, have a look at them carefully and pick out the pretenders from the real bad dudes.

Now just when you have the flies separated from the wasps, along comes another yellow and black critter (see photo of locust beetle) which is not uncommon in our yard since we have a lot of black locust trees. This is an entirely different type of insect (a beetle instead of a fly or wasp), yet it is colored rather similarly and seems to be also mimicking a yellow jacket to obtain protection from predators. Birds likely recognize and avoid yellow jackets and their mimics which fosters the evolution of such convergence in color and pattern. This does not work on mammals such as skunks which make a good living by digging out and eating the young found in the nests of yellow jackets. Indeed skunks, which themselves are well protected by scent and advertised by a striking color, are highly thought of in our neighborhood by farmers who value them for their ability to destroy yellow jacket nests which can cause a lot of pain during haying time.

So learning the basics of insect identification can pay dividends not only in terms of protecting your own hide, but will add to your understanding and enjoyment of the natural world.

Bill Dunson

Galax, VA & Englewood, FL

Beware the red eft

While on one of my daily nature walks I looked down and spotted one of the true beauties of the woods, a red eft (see photo). They wander around, especially after rains and are very slow-moving and unafraid. Of course there is a reason for this- they are protected by a very potent poison, tetrodotoxin. You cannot be poisoned by handling the young newt, but if you eat it your nerve cells will have some severe problems. The bright orange/red coloration of red efts, which are juvenile stages of the red-spotted newt, clearly warns potential predators to leave them alone. As the red efts mature into adults, they become more greenish-yellow (see second photo). The adults return to the water where the gilled larvae started life and spend the rest of their lives there. This "reverse" life history (embryos, gilled larvae and adults are aquatic, but juveniles are terrestrial) is in contrast to typical amphibians, where only the embryos and larvae are aquatic. While there is much about this process that is unclear, it does seem likely that such an alternation of generations between habitats is probably a means of minimizing competition for limited food resources. One strange thing is that not all populations of newts have an eft stage, perhaps due to unsuitability of land habitats or less competition for food in the water. A similar phenomenon may cause retention of gills in some populations of tiger salamanders (leading to presence of aquatic, reproductively adult axolotls that resemble gilled larvae).

Another really interesting feature of red efts is that they are probably mimicked by other amphibians such as the red salamander (see photo). This latter creature is apparently tasty but may be protected by its resemblance to the very toxic red eft. Isn't it intriguing how the color red has come to be used as both a warning and an attractant, for example as the prime color for flowers used for nectar by hummingbirds, and as the color of ripe fruits? Remember also that the recognition of the color red requires that an animal has color vision, which many mammals do not. So the target predators for this red-hued message by the efts is likely to be birds.

Here we have another example of the complex interactions that govern the lives and appearance of critters- just amazing!

-Bill Dunson

Galax, VA & Englewood, FL

Those confusing black and blue butterflies!

Well it is Spring again, that most wonderful time of year when life renews itself, and we have to figure out the names of all those confusing Spring flowers and butterflies that we have not generally seen for many months. I just encountered my first spicebush swallowtail butterfly and since it was a male, it was relatively easy to recognize (see photo). However there are a surprising number of large black and blue butterflies, many in different families and thus not closely related, that resemble one another to an amazing degree. Just for example consider the photos of four species that I have included here: the spicebush and pipevine swallowtails, the female Diana fritillary, and the red-spotted purple (a brushfoot). Considering that the males and females of some species are much more different in appearance than these butterflies from totally different families, what is going on here?

This is believed to be the result of convergence in coloration among butterflies that are poisonous to eat (especially the pipevine swallowtail that feeds on toxic Dutchman's pipe as a caterpillar and thus serves as a model) and tasty or partially tasty mimics that find it advantageous to gain protection from a resemblance to the pipevine swallowtail. Yet why would males and females within one species be so different? For example male eastern tiger swallowtails are yellow and black as are many females, yet some females are dark, especially in the South. Male and female Diana fritillaries are always different and the male is more cryptic.

This similarity in coloration among dissimilar species should remind you of the mimicry group among orange and black butterflies (all poisonous to some degree) that feed on milkweed (monarch, queen, soldier), willow (viceroy) and passionvine (gulf fritillary).

So the predators, mainly birds, are clearly scrutinizing their prey in great detail trying to figure out which ones are good to eat and which are poisonous. The prey are doing their best to confuse the birds. The military "arms race" and strategic deterrence were obviously not invented by the Russians and Americans. Once again we are amazed by the diversity and complexity of life!

-Bill Dunson

Galax, VA & Englewood, FL

What b'fly is that?

The real secret to learning new species of animals and plants is study and repetition, but one thing that works especially well is to focus on the 10 commonest species within each group you are trying to learn. Another is to examine the species that closely resemble each other and figure out to tell them apart. The monarch-resembling group of butterflies can be difficult at first (monarch, queen. soldier, viceroy, gulf fritillary) but there are some clues that will help. For example look at the butterfly in the photo that I took recently at Myakka State Forest. It is reddish-orange with black veins, a little darker and smaller than a monarch; it flies more erratically and is often seen around wetlands with willows. Note especially the dark line that crosses the main veins in the hindwings- a unique and distinctive feature of the VICEROY butterfly, a Muellerian mimic that is also distasteful to birds due to its diet of willows, but less so than the monarch whose caterpillar feeds on milkweeds.

An even more difficult group of similarly appearing butterflies are swallowtails & others that are black, blue and yellow and mimic the toxic pipevine swallowtails. Isn't it amazing how these groups of mimics have evolved, and how hard they make it to learn to identify butterflies?

-Bill Dunson

Englewood, FL