northeast-flora-and-fauna

I probably should have made this the Valentine's Day post, as love was in the air last spring for the Red Milkweed Beetles [1]. And yes, they're doing what you think they're doing. And what better place for milkweed longhorn beetles to meet than on leaves of milkweed? Though not true bugs , they (and other beetles ) almost certainly qualify as colloquial bugs. June 15, 2023 at Sourland Mountain Preserve Photo 300991569, (c) jpviolette, some rights reserved (CC BY-NC) June 15, 2023 at Sourland Mountain Preserve Photo 300991584, (c) jpviolette, some rights reserved (CC BY-NC) [1] In truth, I can't be sure this is love, though I'm fairly confident they were enjoying each other's company.

I've discussed before the various insects that are attracted to milkweed , and this Great Spangled Fritillary and Red Milkweed Beetle represent the 2 main motivations of those insects. The Red Milkweed Beetle represents the insects that want to eat (some parts of) the milkweed, while the Great Spangled Fritillary represents the pollinators that are just here for the nectar. While I'd like to think these guys are friendly acquaintances who meet at the milkweed the way coworkers meet at the water cooler, the realist in me suspects that (at best) they only recognize each other as non-predators they can be around without fear of being eaten. June 15, 2022 at Sourland Mountain Preserve Photo 210218218, (c) jpviolette, some rights reserved (CC BY-NC)

Here are a couple of beetles that are poisonous to eat, at least to birds and us mammals. I'm not sure they're poisonous enough to kill most birds, though it'll probably be sick for a while. [1] They acquire their poisonous nature from eating milkweeds / dogbanes , 2 related and poisonous plants. But don't go tearing out any milkweeds/dogbanes from your yard; the plants are environmentally beneficial and are perfectly harmless if you don't swallow a bunch of it. [2]  If you're going to ingest potentially dangerous chemicals to acquire a poisonous nature yourself, you want to advertise yourself as poisonous. Both these beetles advertise this visually, but they do it in different ways. The Red Milkweed Beetle has the more conventional advertisement; similar to Monarch butterflies and Large/Small Milkweed Bugs, their red coloring warns off at least some of their predators. The Dogbane Leaf Beetle is a bit more creative, and possibly even more eye-catching; their ...

As I mentioned in a previous post, milkweed plants (like many native plants) have their own little communities , and it's not unusual to see insects sharing these plants. Here are a couple examples. Here is a Red Milkweed Beetle sharing its milkweed with what are probably (it's difficult to ID these little guys) Oleander Aphids (above and to the left of the beetle), the former a beloved native insect and the latter a somewhat destructive invasive one. (Or perhaps I've got the wrong aphid - apparently there are other possibilities .) July 28, 2021 at Sourland Mountain Preserve Photo 148654785, (c) jpviolette, some rights reserved (CC BY-NC) And here's another picture, this one of a Monarch caterpillar sharing a milkweed with (presumably) more of those Oleander Aphids. July 28, 2021 at Sourland Mountain Preserve Photo 148654667, (c) jpviolette, some rights reserved (CC BY-NC) Notes: I don't think these insects feel neighborly towards one another, though there may b...

Meet a Small Milkweed Bug . Although I've talked about them a little in a post about the similar-looking False Milkweed Bug, it doesn't look like I've showed a picture of the Small Milkweed Bug. This is yet another example of insect aposematism , where their red coloring signals to potential predators that these bugs are poisonous. Presumably they acquire their poisonousness in the same way that Monarch butterflies, Large Milkweed Bugs, and Red Milkweed Beetles acquire theirs - they get it by eating poisonous milkweed plants. There's a lot to compare and contrast with the Small Milkweed Bug and their Large Milkweed Bug cousins. Though both love to eat the seed pods of milkweed plants, the SMB has been known to feed on other plants and to actually eat some insects on occasion (including Monarchs). And while LMBs have a migration strategy based on following the milkweed crops, the SMBs can overwinter as (dormant) adults. July 10, 2021 at Duke Farms Photo 148186194, (c) ...

Here is a Red Milkweed Beetle couple I met while they were in the throes of passion. These are fairly commonly found on milkweeds, especially the Common Milkweed. Though not particularly large, their red bodies with black spots and long black antenna makes them stand out pretty well on the mostly-green milkweed plants they're usually found on. The red is considered aposematic coloring in that it warns would-be predators that these beetles are at least bad tasting and potentially poisonous. It achieves this despite limiting it's exposure to the milky latex substance in milkweeds. They will bite through a leaf's vein first, impeding the flow of the latex "down vein" of the leaf, and then they'll do their eating down there where they don't encounter a lot of the latex. (Apparently the latex could harden over their mouths, so if they get latex on themselves they quickly try and scrape it off.) Although females are considered to be slightly larger, the males ...

Meet a Swamp Milkweed Leaf Beetle !  When I saw this beetle, my first thought was that this was some sort of ladybug; aphids love eating milkweed, and ladybugs love eating aphids. Of course, I didn't see aphids on this milkweed, but I just chalked it up to a ladybug that was performing due diligence, making sure this milkweed didn't have a meal. But apparently this is a completely different type of beetle, one that eats the milkweed plant itself. Though their most frequently used common name seems to imply they exclusively feed on Swamp Milkweed, they will actually eat most (all?) of our milkweeds, and their second most frequently used common name is actually the broader Milkweed Leaf Beetle. Though they have a different look, they're related to another eater of poisonous plants, the Dogbane Leaf Beetle . Note the red coloring. As an eater of a poisonous plants, this beetle is trying to advertise to predators that it too is poisonous. This is known as aposematism . Milkweed...