Seabrooke

Deerflies

I bet you thought that if you’ve seen one deerfly, you’ve seen them all, right? Would it surprise you, then, to learn that there are some 100 species of deerfly in North America alone? Of course, when they’re swirling about your head it’s hard to tell one from another, and you’re probably not looking too closely at them after you’ve squished them, either. You can buy “deer fly patches” in outdoor-recreation supply stores, found in the same aisle as the bug spray, and these are great tools for examining deerflies more closely. They function like double-sided duct-tape, with one side affixed to the back of your cap where the deerflies like to land, and the exposed side flesh-coloured to attract the bugs (who naturally target the back of the head, where it’s harder for animals to smack them). Of course, they’re designed primarily with bug-relief in mind, but that doesn’t mean you can’t apply your entomological curiosity to the catch, too.

I first noticed that not all of the deerflies landing on my deerfly patches looked the same while out doing MAPS last summer. Some days, when the bugs were really bad, we’d get upwards of 30 or 40 trapped on the patch over a morning. Dan topped out with around 85 crammed onto the thing at once, one particularly buggy day. With that many side-by-side you can really begin to notice the subtle differences. For instance, the top photo is of a very yellow individual with a yellow-and-black thorax and distinct black markings on the abdomen. The second photo, meanwhile, shows an individual with a grayish thorax and thick black markings on the abdomen. Some deerflies have iridescent-red eyes, while others have iridescent-green. Even size varies a little, with some individuals noticeably larger or smaller than others. Nearly all of them are contained in the genus Chrysops, and have the black bands on the wings, and a yellow abdomen with black markings.

Last week at our Maplewood Bog MAPS site I discovered this very distinct deerfly stuck to Dan’s hat. I’d never seen one so dark before, so it caught my eye. Looking closer, I noticed it had fuzzy orange shoulders and bright red eyes. I stole Dan’s hat (temporarily) so I could get a few photos of it; it was too bad I only had my wide-angle lens with me, so I couldn’t get a crisp macro shot of it.

I looked it up when I got home. It was easy to find in BugGuide’s list of deerfly species, as it was the only one that was dark with orange shoulders. This is Chrysops cincticornis. BugGuide has ten photos of the species in their database, all of which are from Ontario and New England, and all of them taken in June. The page offers no information on the life history of the species, and I could find little else (at least in a quick search) on the web. The two pages with actual information indicated that they lay their eggs on certain species of rushes, sedges and grasses in groups of (on average) 215 eggs, and their main flight season in Maine is from the third week of June through the second week of July.

Sunday Snapshot – Snorkeling

Seen while out doing our bioblitz at Frontenac Provincial Park this weekend. He had the canoe tied to his waist with a rope and was paddling along with flippers and a snorkel. Never once saw him take his face out of the water. Seems like a great way to spend a hot afternoon.

Yellow slime mould

I have spent quite a bit of time flipping through my field guide to fungi over the last couple of years. Having only a very basic understanding of mushroom taxonomy, I generally check every single page in the guide until I find a good match, especially when it’s less clear to me which group a particular individual is likely to fall into. Anyone who has spent much time browsing field guides can likely relate when I say that after a while you start to pick out recognizable species that you haven’t yet seen but would really like to. That species (or in this case, group of species) for me in the fungi field guide was slime moulds. It even made #7 on my sixth top-ten list that I posted at the beginning of the year (list #6 was of non-bird observation targets).

To say I was delighted, then, when I came across this sight on the forest floor at our Maplewood Bog site is an understatement. I was totally stoked, completely thrilled, stoked to my earlobes. And yes, over a fungus. But it wasn’t just any fungus, it was a slime mould! Number seven on my top-ten-to-see list! And I could even remember the exact photo depicting this species in my field guide, since it was probably the species of slime mould that intrigued me the most. I didn’t share my elation with Dan, though – he’s always very supportive, but I had a feeling the reaction I’d get would primarily be one of bemusement. Probably not that many people would get too excited over a slime mould. Call me a nerd.

This species is Leocarpus fragilis, which goes by many common names including Eggshell Slime Mould, Insect-egg Slime Mould, and Fragile Yellow Slime Mould. The drop-shaped yellow things are the fruiting bodies of the slime mould, and the whitish stuff is the main “body”, the equivalent of the mycelium “root” network in a traditional mushroom. The difference is that the “roots” of slime moulds can get up and move. And I don’t just mean grow – I mean the whole entity can move from one location to another, climb up and over things, etc. Scientists have actually shown that slime moulds have the ability to “solve” mazes through a trial-and-error process of sending out feelers till they find the right destination, then retracting all the wrong ones and just moving down the correct one. Strictly speaking, slime moulds aren’t even fungi (though they were once classified there) – this and other unique characteristics have awarded them their own Phylum (the same taxonomic level as our classification as Chordata – the vertebrates), Mycetozoa.

L. fragilis is typically found in woodland environments, where it fruits on a wide variety of substrates including, but not limited to, twigs, dead leaves, and overlapping vegetation (such as it’s doing here). Although it’s most commonly yellow, as here, it can also show up in shades of brown or orangeish. It seems to be a widespread species, found across North America as well as in England, from what I can tell from Google results; it might even be holarctic. The common name of Insect-egg Slime Mould is easy to see the origin of, but the “Eggshell” and “Fragile” of the other two both refer to the fact that when the fruiting bodies are mature the outer shell of each little teardrop is quite brittle and will crack easily, releasing the black spores contained within.

Ladies’-tresses

We were at our Maplewood Bog MAPS station today. This is our second year running it, so we’ve already got one season under our belts. Although the exact dates that we’re visiting this year differ from last, the protocol for operations states that we must make seven visits approximately evenly spaced between last week of May and first week of August, so we do still get to see the site across the season. So it was with a bit of surprise that I noticed on this visit some wildflowers that I hadn’t seen there before, either this year or last. The discovery of new-to-me species wouldn’t be too noteworthy in and of itself, except for the fact that these were right beside the path. I mean right beside, like I could have stepped on them right beside. How had I missed them? Could they possibly have been present last summer and I’d just overlooked them?

Perhaps part of the reason I might not have noticed is that they’re pretty small. Each flower is tiny, just a few millimeters wide. The stem itself is a little taller, but few were more than a foot/30 cm.

I thought I recognized that spiraling pattern of the flowers, either from browsing field guides or from some online research I’d done at some point. I had a suspicion that the plant was an orchid, but it was only confirmed when I returned with my camera and was able to get a photo of the flowers I could zoom in on (being close to the ground as they were and not wanting to cut any, it was tricky to see closely otherwise). They have that full lower lip and the two thin side petals that I tend to associate with orchids.

The exact identity remained a mystery until I got home; I couldn’t even remember the common name of the group of orchids it belonged to. However, the answer was easily found: these are Slender Ladies’-tresses, Spiranthes lacera. This is one of the more common of the five species of Spiranthes that have been recorded in Lanark county (where our home is; Maplewood Bog is actually in Frontenac county, but they’re close enough that much of the flora is shared, and I only have a detailed checklist for Lanark). The Frontenac Provincial Park species checklist only lists four ladies’-tresses. They are much smaller than I thought ladies’-tresses were, and if they didn’t have that spiraling pattern I might not have clued in.

Slender Ladies’-tresses are the easiest to identify because, as their name implies, they have a very slender flower stem compared to the others. The “ladies’ tresses” part supposedly comes from the fact that the flower formations resemble the braids of long-haired women (particularly in some other species where there are double-spirals, instead of the single spiral as seen here). The Lanark checklist specifies that the species is found in dry, rocky meadows, and the spot at Maplewood sure fits the bill. The flower in July and August, and the leaves, present in the spring as a basal rosette, wither before the flowers open. Apparently they have a sweet scent, but I didn’t try sniffing them.

It is interesting to note that in that first photo, at the top, two of the stems spiral clockwise while the third spirals counterclockwise. I gather that this is a genetic difference akin to the right- or left-handedness of people. The flowers themselves grow with the thick lower lip at the top, and perform a 180-degree twist prior to opening so that the lip will be presented at the bottom of the flower (this is a characteristic true of most orchids; if you own potted indoor orchids, try watching the flower buds as they open).

Starbellied Orbweaver

Every week or so (it’s become less frequent since I got busy with MAPS) I’ve been walking down to the bog at the back of the property to see what’s going on. I went out a couple of days ago, taking my camera in the hopes of snapping a photo of our Baltimore Checkerspots, which hang out there but which I’ve never seen anywhere else (these were ‘lifers’ when we discovered them there last summer, though I admit my butterfly life list is a little thin from lack of effort). I saw no butterflies, perhaps because it was slightly overcast, but I did discover this fabulously cool spider hanging out in a web there. I think this beats out the Black-and-yellow Argiope and the Marbled Orbweaver for Coolest Spider I’ve Seen To Date.

A quick search of the spider section in my copy of Stephen Marshall’s Insects (sadly, my much-loved Kaufman Insects offers only a cursory coverage of spiders due to space limitations) turned up the ID: this is an Acanthepeira species, likely A. stellata, the Starbellied Orbweaver, though the different Acanthepeira species can be difficult to tell apart and definitive ID often requires examination of the genitalia (makes you wonder how they can tell each other apart, then – do they go around checking out each others’ nether-regions?). The Starbellied is a widespread species, found from eastern Canada south to Florida and east to Kansas and Arizona. Like most orbweavers, it builds a stereotypical spiderweb, vertical with a spoked-wheel appearance, in sunny locations a few feet above the ground. As far as I can tell, the fact that I found it in our bog is simply coincidence, though BugGuide offers limited information on the species and Insects even less. I may have to add a good spider guide to my ever-growing list of books to buy when I win the lottery.