northeast-flora-and-fauna

Satyrs may have started out in Greek mythology, but these days you can find them in modern lepidoptery. Here are a couple of Little Wood Satyrs I saw at 2 different locations on the same spring day. Many of the satyrines (aka "browns") abstain from nectar-feeding altogether as adult butterflies, preferring sap, rotting fruit, and other organic juices. Little Wood Satyrs break with their brethren species in this regard, and thus can sometimes be found on flowers. They're also known to feed off aphid honeydew  [1]. As caterpillars the satyrines tend to chow down on grasses and sedges; perhaps the butterfly in the 1st picture is reminiscing about a memorable meal from its childhood? Or regretting that it's now completely unable to consume blades of grass? May 18, 2023 at Fairview Farm Photo 292810726, (c) jpviolette, some rights reserved (CC BY-NC) May 18, 2023 at Willowwood Arboretum Photo 292813027, (c) jpviolette, some rights reserved (CC BY-NC) [1] Given their ta...

I don't often photograph ants. As fairly small insects, it's frequently difficult for me to get a good enough picture of them to post/identify, but after plenty of iNaturalist IDs I feel fairly good about claiming this as a Ferruginous Carpenter Ant (aka Red Carpenter Ant) [1]. Though I couldn't find a lot of information on the Ferruginous Carpenter Ant, Wikipedia has a pretty good article on carpenter ants in general. They get the "carpenter" part of their name from their ability to bore into wood to build their nests. Unlike termites though, they chew holes in wood only to build a home; they can't eat the wood. There's some question about how bad carpenter ants are for trees. Though they do chew into the tree, they may either eat other insects that feed on the trees, or they may just attack the other insects because they don't want them in the tree-neighborhood. But there is an exception to this: aphids or caterpillars that poop out honeydew may b...

I met this Little Wood Satyr this past July at Washington Valley Park. Although NJ doesn't have - as far as I know - the nymphs and satyrs of Greek mythology, they do have nymphs and satyrs of modern lepidoptery.  As caterpillars, these butterflies feast on various grasses. Most of their relatives are green as caterpillars, but the Little Wood Satyr is brown during their caterpillar phase. One thing they'll drink as adults is aphid honeydew . Is it possible that they could be one of the few beneficiaries of the Spotted Lanternfly , and prolific producer of honeydew? There are at least 2 taxonomic issues relating to the Little Wood Satyr: They seem to breed readily with a butterfly found in the south, the Viola's Wood Satyr ; are they the same species? They frequently have 2 broods that occur too close together for the 1st brood to be the parents of the 2nd brood; some people think these 2 broods might be 2 different but nearly identical species. Currently Little Wood Sa...

I saw quite a few Spotted Lanternflies last year, but I'm definitely seeing more of them this year. (On Monday I actually had two get stuck going inside my shirt - not sure what those guys were thinking.) This invasive insect, spreading like crazy in NJ, hurts many of our plants (including some agriculturally important one) by sucking sap from them. It also excretes a honeydew onto our plants that attracts mold that can damage plant fruits/seeds/leaves. Because of this, Spotted Lanternflies can even damage plants that it does eat if those plants are underneath a plant it does eat; the forest understory could be indirectly damaged by these guys. These guys are true bugs , not flies like their name suggests. Aphids and cicadas are other true bugs, though they're not close relatives to the Spotted Lanternflies. Though I think there's too many of these guys to squish our way out of an infestation, the official advice is to kill them if you find them. Here are pictures of Spot...