Simple geometry, complex biology

Back in the day, homes were often aligned east/west, north/south I guess.  Being built in 1936, my house is oriented to the east and the equinox sun rising aligns with the driveway.  It's cool, but really just simple geometry in action.  There is a week or so either side of the equinox the sun spends in our driveway, then will move on toward winter.

Meanwhile, spiders have ripened with the autumn and can be found hanging in mid-air, hopefully not by your face.  This orb weaver positioned herself below the acacia cultriformis tree at daybreak.  Insect and arachnid life is adapted to adjust life cycles to the changing seasons, many species becoming sexually mature in late summer and autumn and switching gears from feeding and growing to breeding and dying off, or aggregation and over wintering.

Humans, affected by the changing quality of light, pull out boots and sweaters even though the daytime air temperature still hangs in the high 80s.  We'll begin gathering things and stashing them away for the deep of winter. We light candles, hang wreaths, prepare our homes for the coming dark.  We drink pumpkin ale, celebrating the slightest hint of crispness in the now officially autumn air.

Buggy-granate

The dwarf pomegranate did alright this year, seeming to recover from the mites and twisted leaves.  Also reinforced its reputation as drought tolerant, as it received very little supplemental watering through this drought-infested year.

There's something fascinating about a cluster of bugs, morbidly fascinating I suppose.  This is a group of leaf footed bugs (Leptoglossus zonatus) enjoying their adulthood on one of the small pomegranate fruits.  Note the zigzag pattern across the wings and the two yellowish spots on the pronotum (just behind the head) as identifying marks.

Leaf footed bugs are said to overwinter as adults, hiding out in groups in protected places like my woodpile or tree bark, or even within fallen pomegranate fruits and then re-emerge when the spring warms up to feed, mate and lay eggs.  In our warm climate, though, I've seen newly hatched ones in autumn.  So probably there's some of both (overwintering and multi-generationing) going on.

These bugs are considered pests of several crops, including and especially pomegranates.  They have the ability to feed on leaves, shoots, fruit and even seeds with their piercing mouth parts.  I've seen them in my garden on myrtle, opuntia but especially pomegranate but never at a population level approaching pesky.  Just interesting.

Cotinis mutabilis

These big shiny green beetles are well known as fruit eaters.  When we had the fig tree in the nursery, they lived up to their common name 'Fig eater beetles' by attacking and eating the ripe figs enmasse.  Actually, that's one reason we got rid of that fig tree.  The other being, don't particularly like figs or stepping in the fallen ones while doing chores.

But I've also seen these beetles spending a lot of time on flowers, like this one on the bulbine frutescens.  Since Cotinis mutabilis is attracted to sweets (fruit, fruit juice) they could be eating nectar and maybe, incidentally, flower parts.  Cotinis are in the larger group of fruit and flower chafers (Cetoniinae) which includes many flower eating beetles.

It's almost the end of Green Peach beetle season and soon we will miss their big clumsy noisy flights over our heads and bumping into things.  The eggs are laid in the mulch or manure, the larvae will grow over the winter and emerge next summer.  I guess if you grow fruit you would consider these a pest, but we see them as a sign of summer and a cause for wonder:

If a creature this shiny and clumsy and loud can thrive, Earth must be a friendly place.

Ha.  Actually all they require is a likely pile of mulch or compost, and a lack of flooding rains over the winter and the next generation is almost assuredly going to emerge.  They fly far (ever been in the middle of a large parking lot and been buzzed by one?) so if you're trying to eliminate them from your fruit trees, you'll need to get your neighbors to participate in mulch removal as well.

Notes on Transition through Spring

Hello again.

Found this dead moth in the planter 'neath the mailbox.  It's a white lined sphinx moth, Hyles lineata.    The larval food includes elm; could this moth have grown as a caterpillar way up in the elm canopy over the mailbox and planter of its ultimate resting place?  Or did it feed on the portulaca growing in someone else's yard.

Either way, it's spent adult body is now food for ants.  My last post on this species was almost exactly one year ago; I guess that means something.

Dried tulips from a funeral bouquet rest atop my rust-colored metal mesh table.  I didn't know tulips would hold like this, but must have suspected or dreamed they would hence: my attempt to dry them.

The putative rabbitbrush showed its first bud today or yesterday; I don't know since I've been kind of busy.  Anyway, soon it will be covered in bright yellow heads of flowers like last year and the year before that etc.  We had fair to middling success propagating this plant and so there are now more of them populating the parkway strip in the hopes of transforming it into New Mexico.





Notice one winged aphid there among the juicy grey leaves:  harbinger of infestation or forerunner of ladybirds?

Just one crane fly I've rustled from the underbrush this spring?  What the heck, it must be dry out.

I was remarking to the offspring very recently about how mourning doves have not been frequenting our estate in recent years.  So, this morning what do I hear but the squeaky wings of one dove landing atop our canopy.  Maybe a pair will decide it's safe to nest in the yard again.  Or maybe the damned unleashed and uncontrollable bird killing neighbor cats will keep them at bay.

Pelargonium carnosum blooms.  Enough said in a small way.




Wisteria blooms.  Enough said in a very large way.  In fact the neighbors wisteria is threatening to take over our middle-ground and we must retort with sharpened clippers.

I noticed a monarch caterpillar feeding in the milkweed a few days ago.  This morning as I passed by it was no longer feeding so my eyes began searching the nearby shrubbery and found it in the last stages of its final molt to pupa as the sun's path was approaching equinox.  Significant? or just fortuitous.

This article contains a lively discussion of the seasonal significance of the March equinox.  Bear in mind:  it's British, but peruse the comments for an interesting cross section of opinion, misinformation and surprisingly relevant insights into the annual occurrence.  Some folk still paying attention to celestial geometry.

Photo Dump: Papilio zelicaon Edition

Anise swallowtail story, that took place in August 2011, ends in oddness.

A fat mature caterpillar in mid-August contemplates the choice between continuing to eat the fennel and pupation.  Eating wins out for a few more days . . . ha! notice the green stink bug on the right of this photo, recently molted!  Anyway,

eventually pupation is inevitable and the caterpillar assumes the position, spins a silk pad at the rear end and a silk safety line around the middle and waits.

Next day: the fresh pupa full of butterfly-flavored hope.

Three days later, the pupa has been split at the top (head area).
There was some brownish stuff inside.  Predation?  Parasitoid?  Mechanical accident?

The damaged pupa hung there and dried; its silk line broken.

one day I caught this bug, Creontiades rubrinervis, lurking around.  It even went inside the empty shell, seeking what?

Year End Mantis Roundup

Lots of photos left over on the jump drive from 2012;
Stagmomantis californica edition.

As the new year began one of the 2011 mantises was found celebrating on a C7 holiday bulb.  Cheers, and happy new year 2012.

Another adult was playing hard to get among Juan's aeonium a little bit later in January.  The days grow steadily longer but the big mantises disappear.

In March I started seeing tiny ones in various places.  Last photo taken in June, among the grass of June.  Then, a complete dearth of images until after Halloween.

In mid-November, as visions of upcoming Thanksgiving turkey danced in our heads, the succulent mature mantises reappeared from among the shrubberies.  This beauty showed up on a rose across the street.

A few days later this one made an appearance on top of the recycle bin.

Could this have been the same one from the rose, having hitched a ride on my shirt the other day?

A few days passed and no sign of them . . . back into the shrubberies to arise again as a January surprise in 2013?  We can only hope.

Monarch Success

How well do winter-eclosing monarch butterflies (Danaus plexippus) fare in southern California?

Three days ago I was observing the abundance of caterpillars, which will inevitably become pupae, then eclosing butterflies.  By the way, winter maturation of monarch caterpillars is common here; I see lots of them each winter.

I found one recently emerged adult the day I posted on the caterpillars.  The weather that day was cool, breezy and partly sunny.  By late afternoon, this butterfly was lying in the garden path.  I blew some hot air on it and it began to move in my cupped hand.  So I brought it inside for the night to see if it would take flight the next day.  It didn't.  You can see the wings have hardened in a slightly crinkled state, probably not likely to sustain flight.  I had offered the butterfly sliced orange as a food source but couldn't confirm if it had taken any.

The next day turned out to be rainy; while the rumpled butterfly hung on a twig in its wine box on the back porch, I found another monarch very recently emerged hanging from the foliage in a misty rain.  So I brought that one indoors too.

The outcome for each of these butterflies was not good.  The first one never took flight and seemed terribly weak by the morning of 12/19.  The second one's wing was malformed and parts of the chrysalis were stuck to its body.  It flapped its wings vigorously but never took flight.

I set the two butterflies in sunny spots in the garden where maybe, if butterflies have feelings, they could feel the warmth of the sun one time before they died.

I think these two were unlucky as to the timing of their eclosure: we do see successful monarch emergences during the winter months.  After all, southern CA winters are mild, and we have warm dry stretches good for butterfly-ing.

However I'm sure conditions in winter-- Rain, cold, cold wind, lack of abundant flowers to feed on, short day length--take a toll on the adult monarch population that manages to successfully eclose.  On the other hand, many more caterpillars thrive during the winter because the population of wasps that prey on them is so much lower in the cold, and weather conditions don't seem to harm the larvae as they can the adults.  Perhaps a higher number of less fit (genetically) caterpillars live longer in winter because they aren't eaten by wasps but then get weeded out by the perilous process of pupation, made even more risky by unfavorable weather.  Or, because there are so many more pupations this time of year (because so many more caterpillars are maturing) does it just seem like there are an awful lot of failures, but percentage-wise is it the same as during spring/summer/fall?

Monarch Season

Hello there.  It's a nice chilly 57 degrees here with light rain off and on.  We've had a week or so of intermittent rain and overcast and so I'd say it's looking a lot like spring.  Yep, this time of year is when our hills green up, the mallow seeds sprout (photos later), the holiday lights go up (photos later) and of course the monarch butterflies go bonkers.

I was out back checking on things (wasting time I should be shopping?  NOT) when I couldn't help notice the milkweed dripping with fat soon-to-pupate monarch caterpillars.

There were some small half-pint caterpillars too.  On one branch the two stages met.  You can appreciate the difference a few extra weeks of eating makes in the relative sizes of the two caterpillars seen here.

The monarchs eat a lot and can completely or nearly defoliate the plant they're on.  Meanwhile the oleander aphids proliferate in huge numbers and help in the defoliation process.  Also, I suppose, the depodding.  You can see lots of alar (winged) aphids on the seed pod.

I found two small caterpillars on this nearly leafless plant; one I relocated to a more lush feeding ground.  The other one, seen here heading toward and then eating a tiny leaf bud or nub covered in aphis nerii, I left alone.  I'm sure it will be able to find enough to eat, even if it has to climb down to the ground and up another plant.

I also found a monarch chrysalis that has turned transparent so the orange of wings can be seen inside.  Soon to eclose for sure.  It's hanging in the bronze fennel, former home of the anise swallowtails.  Monarch (and other) caterpillars do often go travelling when it's time to molt and pupate, and I more often find pupae in plants other than milkweed.  That's a drop of water there among the gold spots, by the way.

I went back for another look this morning--still pupating--but found a different floppy-winged, recently-eclosed butterfly clinging to some grass along the path.  It looked weak.  Cold and drizzle seem like an unlikely recipe for butterfly success.

Heading back to the house I saw this caterpillar gone wandering among the agapanthas.  It is surely searching for a pupation spot, likely to be up on a woody stem of the phlomis, same plant where other monarchs have pupated in seasons past.

You can see its searching behavior in this photo, where the caterpillar clings with its prolegs and stretches and waves its body back and forth in an effort to make contact with suitable substrate (based on texture? firmness? orientation to the horizontal? what?) to pupate upon.




Near sunset I went out to check on the butterfly's progress.  It was lying in the path motionless.  I picked it up and in a few moments it started to move.  So I took it inside where Mr. Cardui was building a fire in the woodstove.  The butterfly was soon able to climb to the top of a twig I placed inside a wine box and seems to be resting, nestled in an upper corner, for the night.  We'll see if tomorrow brings sun and butterfly first flight.

Crazy monarch behavior: preferable to frenetic human holiday behavior?