Tag Archives: insects

Get to know some local chelicerates, from spiders to scorpions and pseudoscorpions

This is an excerpt from my article in the September – October issue of Triangle Gardener magazine, available at local libraries, the NC Botanical Garden, plant nurseries, etc. and posted online at www.trianglegardener.com. This is the last part of the article. Also, the annual Big Sweep and UNC University Day trash clean-ups are coming up in October. Late September also seems to be the season when copperheads get on roads at night, often in the same places every year, and then can’t or won’t avoid traffic, possibly because they get too cold, and get killed. I carry a metal grabber so I can safely remove copperheads, but I often come across them too late. Note that people have been ‘bitten’ handling dead snakes.

I doubt that arachnophobia is innate, but I have long been disturbed by spiders. I used to be a bit creeped out just looking at the photos in the Audubon guide to insects and arachnids. When I was very young there were large, striped spiders in my backyard, perhaps rabid or dotted wolf spiders, and unfortunately I tried to kill them. I don’t remember going out of my way to knock down webs and some arachnids and spiders were less unsettling. I wasn’t really afraid of omnivorous daddy longlegs, also known as harvestmen or shepherd spiders, though I think I was bitten once. NC has many species of daddy longlegs. Later I volunteered in UNC’s invertebrate biology lab, and was asked if I wanted to hold the hairy, palm-sized tarantula. It had its legs tucked in and didn’t move, so it wasn’t very trying. On the other hand last fall I was disturbed when a brown orbweaver, spinning its, probably her, web at the front door on a breezy evening suddenly dropped down to anchor a line, revealing just how large and ‘spidery’ she was, legs outstretched. A few weeks ago I saw a pretty large wolf spider indoors. I was preoccupied at the time, so I let it stay inside temporarily as a beneficial animal, but I haven’t seen it since.

Insects have three body sections and six legs with five parts, while spiders have two body sections and eight legs, with seven parts. Crustaceans are arthropods with 10 legs and four antennae, but are accepted as food animals. Insects generally have a pair of compound eyes and three smaller simple eyes, while spiders have at most eight simple eyes, the arrangement and acuity varying by family. Moving a pencil tip around a corner attracts a sharp-eyed jumping spider, like a curious cat. Jumping spiders might also tend to be more intelligent than most spiders, especially those that specialize in hunting other spiders. Spiders use ‘hairiness’ for functions like sensing, in the absence of antennae; defense; etc. Spider chelicerae end with sharp, venom-injecting fangs and are sometimes toothed. The chelicerae and pedipalps just behind rub together to grind up prey, but spiders typically only consume pre-digested juices. Some spiders are actually omnivorous or even mostly herbivorous. Males can be identified by their clubbed pedipalps, used in mating. Many spiders engage in courtship and in most species males survive the attempt. It seems like arachnids are often longer lived than insects and spiders often mature later in the growing season. Spiders can go to an exposed point, such as the roof of a car, and release a long silk thread to catch the wind and balloon to a new location. Spiders typically make several kinds of silk, even a silk just for egg sacs. Medicine spider silk was once used to make a painkiller and clothes, bandages, and canvases for painting have been made with spider silk.

The NC Biodiversity Project website lists 713 arachnids in the state. LL Gaddy estimated in 2009 that there are around 600 spider species in the Carolinas. The Tuscarora orbweaver is only found in NC, including in Durham County. The spruce-fir moss spider is an endangered species found on peaks in the Appalachians.

At Falls Lake State Recreation Area there are black trapdoor spiders of some kind, resembling tarantulas. Actual tarantulas are considered a normal food animal in some cultures. Huge dark fishing spiders live around the park buildings, where I saw one kill an adult Carolina mantis. Smaller and more aquatic six-spotted fishing spiders, which actually have more than six spots, might be seen around Parkwood’s Euclid Pond on summer days, delicately moving on and sometimes under the surface. Species of elongated long-jawed spiders typically build their webs in vegetation at the edges of ponds and are common in the area.

Once I got lost in a scrubby forest behind Kure Beach, between Wilmington and the end of the Cape Fear River, where the water from Northeast Creek meets the sea, and was struck by the many large brown and yellow butterflies, probably giant swallowtails, flitting about. I was also struck by the numerous boxy webs inhabited by very large female golden silk orbweavers and much smaller males. It seemed like the spiders weren’t catching the similarly huge swallowtails, but I have seen other orbweavers capture a swallowtail or cicada. Golden silk orbweaver build their webs in stages and refurbished them a half at a time. I think I read that they have been found in Raleigh, but these spiders might have been brought back by vacationers. On the other hand with a warming climate they might extend their range inland. Southeastern NC is at the northern limit of their range, which extends to the Amazon. Male spiders often live near or in webs spun by females, but truly social spiders are limited to the tropics. There is also the case of introduced snakes killing off native birds in the tropical Pacific, leading to forests abnormally full of solitary spider webs.

Another large orbweaver is the yellow garden spider, known for the stabilimentum, a jagged line down their webs. In recent years I had some, the males staying near the females. One morning last summer a wrapped up and stored away and May beetle was waving a backleg and I peeled off the silk and freed it , apparently unharmed, but afterward the female left, as if taking umbrage, followed by her retinue, and I haven’t seen any since.

There are still one or more large brown nocturnal orbweavers, maybe Neoscona species, though it seems like they were more abundant many years ago. I saw one or two near porchlights over the summer, but not in recent weeks. Occasionally the large orbweavers are joined by much smaller conical spiders colored like liquid mercury, species of Argyrodes, co-habiting the webs as kleptoparasites, feeding on caught insects and possibly also on the orbweavers when they die in the fall.

Several smaller orbweavers can be seen during the day in wooded areas and yards and their webs can stick to people in late summer. This summer I noticed a few spiny orbweavers, white or yellow with somewhat colorful spots and ‘spines,’ the harmless spikes possibly providing some protection from birds. Their webs have prominent white dashes around the edges and in the center. More familiar Micrathena orbweavers are also spiny. It seems like triangulate orbweavers or something similar like to place their large webs across bottomland clearings. Triangulate orbweavers have a prominent white, yellow, or pink triangle on the top of their abdomen. Conical trashline orbweavers leave a vertical line of silky debris in their webs.

I sometimes see widows in webs around house foundations and in outbuildings. Female Northern and Southern black widows are large and black with bright red markings, but the smaller males look different and brown widows are moving north. Unrelated brown recluses are apparently not native to the Carolinas and are rare. These are the only venomous spiders regularly found in the Carolinas whose bites might cause serious effects. Some spiders are physically unable to bite humans and in general venomous animals won’t bite or sting if left alone and if they do, some have the option of injecting little or no venom.

I occasionally see green lynx spiders, relatively large and bristly spiders that hunt on plants, females turning from bright green to brown in the the fall. Aparently green lynx spiders fill an ecological niche similar to that of crab spiders. I see various crab spider species more often, usually lying in a wait on an upper leaf or flower, where they can be very colorful for camouflage.

[11/21 edit – Spiders frequently turn up in religion and mythology and there are many ideas about spiders (usually small) bringing general luck, money, visitors, letters, or new clothes and prognosticating the weather. Sometimes small spiders were nonchalantly eaten alive for luck, etc. On the other hand it is considered unlucky to kill spiders (maybe this is only at night) and daddy longlegs (it’s possible that this actually refers to a spider often found indoors in Europe – see the Spiders of North-West Europe website linked below). This has also been said about killing crickets, katydids, ladybugs, wasps, toads, frogs, doves, etc. For some reason killing a spider was linked with water, while killing a toad was linked to fire. Taking down webs and cobwebs has also been said to be unlucky. Spiders have been used for illness such as fevers (ague), malaria, and whooping cough and their webs were supposed to staunch bleeding. Medicine spider webs were mentioned above.]





Some resources:


Spiders of the Carolinas LL Gaddy, 2009

The Audubon Guide to North American Insects & Spiders [and other arachnids] Lorus and Margery Milne, 1992

North Carolina Biodiversity Project – Arachnids – www.nc-biodiversity.com/taxonomic-group/arachnids

Arachnids of NC, from the above site – auth1.dpr.ncparks.gov/arachnid/index.php .

Arachnids of NC checklist – auth1.dpr.ncparks.gov/arachnid/checklist.php?format=pdf

Biology of the Invertebrates, Fourth Edition Jan A Pechenik, 2000

The Life of the Spider John Crompton, 1954 – anecdotes

eco.confex.com/eco/2008/techprogram/P12401.HTM – a mostly vegetarian Central American jumping spider – information at the 93rd annual meeting of the Ecological Society of America

A review of the ethology of jumping spiders (Araneae, Salticidae) David B Richman and Robert R Jackson, 1992 – www.peckhamia.com/hosted/Richman%20Jackson%201992%20A%20review%20of%20the%20ethology%20of%20jumping%20spiders.pdf

Pseudoscorpions of the World – museum.wa.gov.au/catalogues/pseudoscorpions

Spiders of North-West Europe – ednieuw.home.xs4all.nl/Spiders/spidhome.htm

World Spider Catalog – wsc.nmbe.ch/statistics/

Global Biodiversity Information Facility – www.gbif.org

BugGuide – www.bugguide.net/

American Arachnological Society – Americanarachnology.org

International Society of Arachnology – arachnology.org

The Arachnid Order Solifugae – www.solifugae.info/index.html

AracnoLab – Aracnologia MNRJ – Museu Nacional/Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro – mndi.museunacional.ufrj.br/aracnologia/ – on daddy longlegs, harvestmen, or shepherd spiders

Jumping spiders (Arachnida: Araneae: Salticidae) of the world –www.jumping-spiders.com

International Field Guides – find a field guide by subject or region – www.library.illinois.edu/biology/fieldguides/

[The Complete Illustrated Book of the Psychic Sciences, Walter B and Litzka R Gibson, drawings by Murray Keshner, 1966.

A Dictionary of Superstitions, Iona Opie and Moira Tatem, 1989.]

Grasshoppers and kin, the acoustic insects

The orthopterans – mainly grasshoppers, katydids, and crickets – are familiar and appealing insects, easily heard, if not seen, and sometimes colorful. They are active year-round and often prominent. Bird grasshoppers can be seen flying in deciduous woods and thickets on sunny late winter afternoons. By early April the buzzing flight, or crepitation, of small grasshoppers was audible in yards. On warm evenings in spring there is a loud, monotonous buzzing, undoubtedly from orthopterans. I first hear the familiar katydids of summer in late June, continuing towards first frost, long after the cicadas. Next crickets stand out. Compare how loud nights are in summer and fall to how silent they are, animal-wise, from late fall through spring, though a few crickets call on warm nights even then. There are also tree crickets and bizarre, fossorial mole crickets. There could be silent, sometimes non-native camel crickets indoors. 178 butterflies have been recorded in NC, versus 259 orthopterans (and almost 500 birds), and butterflies are probably the better surveyed group. Gardeners could invite orthopterans into wild or nocturnal gardens.

The Orthoptera (combining “straight” and “wing”) is one of the more ancient insect orders, with similarities to dragonflies. At one time it also included cockroaches, mantises, and walkingsticks. Orthoptera is divided into two suborders, grasshoppers (sometimes termed short-horned, many in the Acrididae family) versus katydids (or long-horned grasshoppers) and crickets, Caelifera and Ensifera respectively. Some short-horned grasshoppers are called locusts, from locus ustus, Latin for “burnt place,” describing the land picked clean by grasshoppers. Apparently cicadas have been called locusts since the late 1600’s, but cicadas are sucking insects in the order Homoptera, with tiny, colorful leafhoppers, treehoppers, and aphids. There are also leguminacious locust trees.

Orthopteran wings are pleated, folding like hand fans. Not all adult orthopterans have wings, but in general they have toughened forewings, or tegmina, protecting hindwings. Their calls are made by stridulation, rubbing their wings and/or legs, a very different method than that used by cicadas. Male orthopterans generally make calling songs and in some cases the females briefly reply. There can also be courtship songs, fight songs, and protest songs. Some orthopterans produce sounds by wing snapping in flight, crepitation, or by drumming their hind legs against the substrate they rest on. Females have ovipositors, often prominent and sometimes brightly colored in katydids and crickets, which they use to hid their eggs underground or in plant tissue; most grasshopper species lay their eggmasses in the soil. Orthopterans grow through simple metamorphosis, the nymphs resembling adults, just wingless and having possibly cute proportions. Hoppers’ big eyes and deliberate movements might also be appealing.

There is growing talk of dietary changes being necessary for sustainability, and orthopterans have long been on the menu. They have relatively soft exoskeletons and look meaty, with 50-75% crude protein in grasshoppers and katydids, though I wonder how arthropods could be killed humanely. I ate a tasty assortment of salted insects, including orthopterans, I received one Christmas.

This is an excerpt from my article in the May – June issue of Triangle Gardener magazine, available in print at local libraries, stores, and gardens and posted online at www.trianglegardener.com.


Some guides and sources:



The Audubon Society Field Guide to North American Insects and Spiders. Milne, Lorus and Margery, 1992.

Field Guide to Grasshoppers, Katydids, and Crickets of the United States. Capinera, John L, Scott, Ralph D, and Walker, Thomas J, 2004.

How to Know the Grasshoppers, Cockroaches and Their Allies. Helfer, Jacques R, 1953.

auth1.dpr.ncparks.gov/orth/index.php – Orthoptera of North Carolina

nc-biodiversity.com – The North Carolina Biodiversity Project [Orthoptera of NC is a subsidiary of this project]

www.bugguide.net

songsofinsects.com

Orthsoc.org/sina – Singing Insects of North America [covers crickets, katydids, and cicadas; created by the Orthopterists’ Society]

Locust: The Devastating Rise and Mysterious Disappearance of the Insect that Shaped the American Frontier. Jeffrey A Lockwood, 2005

roadsendnaturalist.com [a blog in Chatham County with some orthopteran photos]

www.carolinanature.com/insects/ [another Triangle blog with some photos]

Explore upper New Hope Creek around Johnston Mill Nature Preserve

The Triangle Land Conservancy’s Johnston Mill Nature Preserve, established in June 1999, protects 296 acres along upper New Hope Creek. Much of the Triangle is in the New Hope basin, including major tributary Northeast Creek, and most of the Jordan Lake reservoir, a source of water for several municipalities, sits in the valley of the New Hope River. The lower end of New Hope Creek meanders across wide bottomlands in the Triassic Basin, while at Johnston Mill the Creek, still surprisingly wide, is clear and rocky like the Eno and there are stony remains of gristmills. I didn’t see any fish when I visited in mid-February, though I also didn’t make a special effort to find them, but this should be a good place to watch fish building their nests and spawning in the spring and early summer. In February a spring bloom of algae grew on cobbles in shallow sections with the increasing warmth and daylength. Much of the surrounding forest is not especially old, though there are some large and old trees, but it still shelters many rare to threatened species and is very biodiverse; for example more than 125 bird species have been seen and there many species of early-blooming and often very uncommon woodland wildflowers. The mix of fields and old to young forest, ranging from dry hilltops down to riparian edges, heightens biodiversity and the Preserve roughly links segements of Duke Forest for species that need large areas of contiguous forest. Being just north of Chapel Hill and near Durham, this seems to be one of the TLC’s busier preserves, especially near the Mount Sinai Road entrance. I found someone’s painted #Rockhunt cobble hidden between two trees far out on the Old Field Bluff Trail.

The reddish soil has numerous rocks, metamorphic or maybe igneous, unlike the generally sedimentary and relatively soft bedrock laid down in the Triassic Basin. Jagged outcroppings, a few supporting Polypodium ferns, and exposures in creek beds reveal vertically upturned bedrock.

The TLC says Johnston Mill has beech up to 150 years old, and there are large oaks. White and Northern red oaks, along with red maples, are common on the hilltops while lower down there are large, uncarved beech and May-blooming tuliptrees, above summer-blooming sourwoods. Elsewhere sycamores, hackberries, sweetgums, shagbark and other hickories, sugar maples, ash, and three species of pine grow above ironwood, hophornbeam, red cedars, black cherries, and occasional hollies. Black walnuts are most frequent in the younger woods in the northwest of the Preserve, along a high-tension powerline, where the forest intergrades with rural farmland and a few houses. Large lianas dangle from the canopy, including grapes and trumpetcreepers, attracting hummingbirds. These massive vines probably grew together with the original woody old field pioneers, such as the tuliptrees and sweetgums. Early-blooming spicebush and painted buckeyes grow near the streams, especially in the northwest section of the Preserve. There might be fringetrees, which bloom later in April. Elms, almost ready to bloom when I last visited, and a few boxelders and birch border the creeks. Throughout the Preserve what must be crownbeard, a tall yellow composite flower that blooms in late summer, is abundant and there are the stems of last summer’s mullein, mint, millkvine, dogfennel, nightshade, and broomsedge. The NC Natural Heritage Program’s inventory of significant natural areas in Orange County says “this is one of the most pleasing forest areas of its size in the county” and “The diversity of spring-blooming herbs is also extremely high and of great aesthetic value,” and includes early-blooming Hepatica, trout lilies, rue anemones, spring beauties, toothworts, jack-in-the-pulpit, and very rare Catesby’s trilliums (I don’t think I have ever seen any trillium species growing wild). Evergreen Christmas ferns, mosses, clubmoss, wild ginger, and May-blooming pipsissewa stood out in the leafless winter forest.

Shortly after walking in from the Turkey Farm Road entrance I saw a golden-crowned kinglet fluttering, gleaning the bare twigtips, a rare sight for me, though maybe not the first time after all, and it was just where Liz Pullman’s write-up for the Carolina Bird Club says to look for them ( www.carolinabirdclub.org/birdingnc/johnston_mill.html ). A belted kingfisher loudly patrolled along New Hope Creek. I saw, heard, or found evidence of 4 to 5 woodpecker species, white-breasted nuthatches, thrushes, hawks, barred owls, turkey vultures, brown thrashers, white-throated sparrows, what I think were savannah sparrows, possibly a phoebe, and several other species. Many warblers, both summer and scarlet tanagers, flycatchers, vireos, and other birds not often seen in yards can be seen in the bottomlands, especially during migration. Turkeys, bobwhites, hawks, yellow-breasted chats, indigo buntings, and similar blue grosbeaks can be seen in the open areas. According to the NC Natural Heritage Program Inventory 21-23 species nested near Old Field Creek annually during the 80’s, including the more montane broad-winged hawks and worm-eating warblers.

Catawba rhododendrons, galax, trailing arbutus, saprophyte sweet pinesap, and foamflowers (another wildflower I have only seen cultivated) grow a short distance downstream in Duke Forest, at least partially accessible from Mount Sinai Road. There more typically western and montane plants, nesting cedar waxwings, red salamanders, and large red sumo mites meet more eastern dwarf waterdogs, yellow-bellied sliders, and snail bullheads.

Eastern chipmunks live in Duke Forest if not here, and the leafy nests of gray squirrels were very visible in late winter. A dog off-leash flushed out three or more hidden deer, and a small herd stood by Turkey Farm Road in the twilight as I left; the deer warning signs in the area are very appropriate. There were signs of beavers; river otters live in parts of New Hope Creek, possibly including Johnston Mill.

It was sunny and cold, but what were probably upland chorus frogs sang briefly near the Turkey Farm Road bluff in early afternoon. It didn’t feel that cold, but the temperature might have been in the 30’s and the wind picked up later. Marbled and spotted salamanders, Northern cricket frogs, and others breed in the bottomland while four-toed salamanders and gray petaltails, rare and primitive dragonflies, breed in hillside seeps. I saw a pickerel frog, similar to a leopard frog but earth-colored, with rectangular spots, and poisonous to other frogs, in rural Orange County when I was very young and never again anywhere else, though they can supposedly be found statewide, and they have been seen hereabouts. I am also impressed that queen snakes, a species more common in western NC and specializing in crayfish, especially recently molted, ‘soft-shelled’ ones, can be found downstream in Duke Forest.

Despite the lingering cold I found some arthropods, a small brown ant and small gray spider, as well as a large mantis eggmass, possibly from a Chinese or praying mantis, and many hackberry leaf galls. Getting to Johnston Mill small yellow daffodils, brilliant blue bluebirds, and a thrush were out as spring approached.

This is a re-edited excerpt from my article in the March – April issue of Triangle Gardener magazine, available at local libraries, gardens, and stores and also posted online at www.trianglegardener.com.
For a trail map, etc. see: www.triangleland.org/explore/nature-preserves/johnston-mill-nature-preserve

Late summer soothsayers

In late July or early August last year I walked under a hackberry sapling in my backyard and thought, surely I won’t look up and see an arboreal rough green snake. Instead I was surprised to find a large green and brown mantis, and it was there almost every day through mid-September. The hackberry attracted a species of large, blueish-gray plant-sucking true bug, and the mantis ate those, and then cicadas, putting on weight. It stalked large dragonflies that perched on dead twigs but I never saw it catch one (it also stalked small katydids, but I’m not sure if it caught any). At night it rested, often upside down, its ‘beady’ green eyes turning black. Earlier that summer I saw a beautiful green nymph that might have been the same mantis. The adult was probably a female Chinese mantis (Tenodera sinensis), but it could have been a narrow-winged or Japanese mantis (Tenodera augustipennis), or a praying or European mantis, which is actually only one kind (Mantis religiosa). Later I found an eggcase, resembling that of a Chinese mantis, on a low plant nearby and nymphs are around again this year. There were also Carolina mantises (Stagomantis carolina), a small, mottled gray species with bright orange markings. One spent a night just before Halloween on a red maple snag covered with morning glories vines. There are more than 2500 species, and over 11 in the USA (and introduced species might be harming native mantises). Mantises or mantids were classified with grasshoppers as orthopterans and then given their own order, Mantodea. Mantises are closest to cockroaches and termites, and they can all be grouped together as dicytopterans.

Also in the area there are much smaller but also predaceous mantisflies, which resemble a cross between a mantis and a wasp or fly, but they are neuropterans like lacewings and antlions.

Mantis comes from Greek for prophet, and mantises are charismatic creatures worldwide. Here they have been called soothsayers, rearhorses, devil-horses (god-horse in the Caribbean), praying locusts, and mulekillers, because their dark saliva was thought to be poisonous (and blinding). In the Southwest they were called campomoche and cortón, rezadora, or just mantis in Spanish. A Japanese name is kamakiri, which appears to combine sickle and “to cut,” but this is a guess about the etymology. Another name is tōrō. T. augustipennis is called Chōsen [Korea] kamakiri in Japanese while T. sinensis is ōkamakiri (presumably big mantis). Praying mantis is la mante religieuse or prie-Dieu in French and Gottesanbeterin in German. A dictionary from ancient Assyria calls them necromancer or soothsayer-grasshoppers. In ancient Egypt the bird-fly was thought to guide the dead and in ancient Greece mantids directed lost travellers. The Southern Africa trickster god !Kaggen could appear as a mantis inspiring an Afrikaans word for mantis, Hottentotsgot. Mantids were apparently more closely observed in East Asia than in Europe and inspired two Chinese martial arts. Mantises appear on ancient Greek coins and in modern monster movies. People today talk about being abducted by mantislike beings. The Carolina mantis is South Carolina’s state insect while Connecticut’s is the praying mantis. Mantises are also popular as insect pets.

This is an excerpt from my article in the July – August issue of Triangle Gardener magazine, available at many libraries, public gardens, and gardening-related stores in the Triangle and posted online at: www.trianglegardener.com

Some resources:

A key to the mantises of Florida, but useful elsewhere:

entnemdept.ufl.edu/choate/mantid_key2_03.pdf

Carolina mantises:

bugguide.net/node/view/4821

Praying mantises:

bugguide.net/node/view/22947

Chinese mantises:

bugguide.net/node/view/12409 

Narrow-winged mantises:

bugguide.net/node/view/22947

Asian jumping mantises (recently found in Virginia and north apparently):

bugguide.net/node/view/1738253

animaldiversity.org/site/accounts/information/Stagmomantis_carolina.html/ (Carolina mantis)

animaldiversity.org/accounts/Tenodera_aridifolia/ (Chinese mantis listed under an old classification or a closely related species)

“Praying mantids of the United Statesn, native and introduced,” a detailed article in the 1950 Annual Report of the Board of Regents of the Smithsonian Institution:

www.biodiversitylibrary.org/page/8787514#page/408/mode/1up

“Another Oriental mantis well established in the United States” in the 1933 Entomological News:

www.biodiversitylibrary.org/item/20315#page/9/mode/1up

Japanese insect website with many photos:

www.insects.jp/konbunkama.htm