Spot the Beetle

A few weeks ago, as we continued to explore areas in our new community, we stopped by a little wayside between Duvall and Carnation called Chinook Bend Natural Area.

We'd popped in there last summer and attempted to go for a walk but were felled by the heat within five minutes, as the path took us through a treeless swale and, after 25 years of living in the Puget Sound region, we were no longer capable of surviving outside a narrow temperature range.

This time, however, it was a gentle, early-spring day with a light breeze, so we made it to the river, over a pile of slash, into a woodland, and back again.

Along the way we encountered this marvelous beetle (at left).

Most western gardeners would probably not call this a marvelous beetle. They would call it many rude names. Because it is a western spotted cucumber beetle, Diabrotica undecimpunctata. 

No sources have much good to say about this beetle. Most of the sources are ones dealing with pest management, and they point out that this insect transmits crop diseases and damages a wide variety of garden plants and crops, including corn, soy, squash, and cucumbers.

Even the Audubon field guide says (of its eastern cousin) that it's "one of the most destructive beetles" and "damages foliage, flowers, and pollen of cucumbers, melons, corn, potatoes, and peanuts." Its offspring are called "corn rootworms" because they feed on the roots of crops.

I would surely pluck this beetle off my vegetables if I found it in our garden, but this beetle was minding its own business and trundling around in its native habitat, ignorant of the fact that it was named after a vegetable (actually, a fruit) that itself is native to southeast Asia.

The plant it's on appears to be a Sitka willow, Salix sitchensis. Part of what made this insect so marvelous to us was its cartoonish pattern of big black spots on a bright green background, but also the way that ridiculous coloration caused it to blend in with the catkins, which appeared black-spotted thanks to the dark bracts at the base of its small flowers.

What the beetle's nefarious plans were after we left, I cannot say, though from what I could dig up on its life history, it'll include laying up to 300 eggs over the next few weeks, if it's a female. For now, it was busy doing just what the field guide Insects of the Pacific Northwest said it usually does: "feeding on light-colored flowers." Apparently it's fond of dandelions.

It was a lot easier to find admiring commentary on the willow, which was used by native peoples for a variety of purposes--making ropes, gray pigment for dyeing mountain-goat wool, and even absorbent material for diapers. It'd be interesting to know what Native Americans thought of the beetle in those times, as I assume it wasn't a major agricultural pest back in the day.

I couldn't figure out the meaning of the first half of its scientific name, but the undecimpunctata part means "11-spotted." A curious name for a 12-spotted beetle, except that two of the spots come together to form one big spot when it closes its wing covers. Tricky beast.

Pollination Celebration

Critters are pollinating the heck out of the garden. Every flower seems to harbor a bee, beetle, or fly, and every time Luna sticks her nose into a plant, something flies out in a panic and she jumps back in surprise.

I'm not a pollinator, of course, but pollination has been much on my mind of late because I've been working simultaneously on two writing projects involving insects. So I am primed to spout statistics such as "about 75 percent of flowering plants rely on animal pollinators in order to set seed."  (I am also popping Benadryl tablets with frequency as pollen from wind-pollinated grasses ends up in my nasal passages instead of on grass flowers, much to my and the flowers' dismay.)

Here is a concatenation of snaps of pollination on our plantation being done with determination by a conglomeration of invertebration:

African daisy, with pollen splatter after rainfall

 

A species of bumble bee lolling around drunkenly inside a rhododendron blossom.



This beetle is, I think, a 20-spotted Lady Beetle, Psyllobora vigintimaculata. I haven't had any luck
deciphering the first part of this scientific name, but the latter translates, somewhat disappointingly, to merely "twenty spotted." Beetles are not as efficient as bees at pollinating but some flowers lure them specifically. This one is on a sedum flower and is well camouflaged incidentally by all those anthers. These lady beetles feed on fungi, not aphids. Its mandibles are lined with comblike small "teeth" for raking fungus and fungal spores from plant surfaces. This species is found throughout the United States and into Canada and Mexico.

The all-time pollination champion, the honey bee.
(At least I'm pretty sure it's a honey bee.)

Nectar guides, lines that point the way to where
nectar is stored in flowers such as the pansy

Living Under a Rock (Literally)

Turned over a paving stone in the garden yesterday to see if anything was stirring yet, as spring has been dragging its feet around here this year. Things appear to be busier in the hidden parts of the garden as there were many small creatures bustling about out of sight. They were none too pleased about their roof being lifted, so I didn't leave them uncovered for long--just long enough to take some paparazzi shots.

The most obliging subject was this little mollusk, which I am pretty sure is a Garlic Snail:

The "garlic" in the name refers to its garlicky smell, which it produces when it wants to ward off a predator. This little guy is an import from England, where its pungent odor serves to repel hedgehogs. One would think that smelling like garlic would be a bad idea for a snail, as it might attract French chefs and give them ideas, but apparently it works against hedgehogs.

There aren't any hedgehogs here, so I hope the snail's defenses work equally well against our native predators, particularly this slug- and snail-eating insect that also lived under the stone:

It's a rove beetle (I don't know what species), a kind of beetle with very short hard wing coverings as opposed to the body-length elytra of most beetles. It looks a bit as if it's wearing a short tuxedo jacket with the tails lopped off. Like its snail prey, the rove beetle emits a terrible odor to repel predators. It also takes up a defensive stance, its mandibles ready to pinch and its abdomen arched over its back in scorpion style.

This pugnacity earned it a superstitious association with the devil back in the Middle Ages, one that's clung to it ever since. One species of rove beetle, also an import from the UK, can be up to two inches long and is known as the Devil's Coach Horse, a name that's also commonly used for the thousands of other, smaller rove beetle species. Poor things, all they want to do is eat snails, slugs, and fly larvae, and people run around screaming that these little critters eat sinners and aim their "tails" over their bodies to curse humans.

Another little stinker under the slate was a millipede:

This millipede was very sluggish, acting as though it had just been roused from a deep sleep and had to look for each of its hundred or so slippers before responding to the removal of its roof. Millipedes spend their time munching on decaying plant matter and only produce a dreadful aroma if something tries to eat them, so they're good roommates for the snails.

The pillbugs are, too, as they're not predators, either. This one took offense at my nosiness and did the armadillo thing:

Finally, assuming that I'd gone off to eat other arthropods, it unrolled and trundled on its merry way, shouldering aside garlic snails as it went.