The larvae I was monitoring in the False Gromwell flowers
have disappeared. This doesn’t surprise
me, because it is the normal conclusion whenever I try to follow caterpillar
development in the wild. Larvae often
move to new parts of the plant as they grow and some even move to new plants,
so there’s a chance they are alive and well in a different location. They may have represented some small species
and have already pupated. I suspect they
may have been eaten. If I was able to
find them, they should have been easy to discover by some caterpillar predator.
Those larvae may be gone, but something has deposited a
bunch of new eggs in the flower whorls.
Maybe these are from the Onosmodium moth I’ve been looking for.
The Onosmodium plants are performing exceptionally well this
year. Many may top four feet once their
flower stalks have completely extended.
While searching for my missing larvae, I took the time to examine a few
other residents of the Onosmodium plant.
Some insects are found on a plant because of developmental
requirements that can only be satisfied by a particular plant species. Other insects are there just because the
plant is a convenient resting place. The
host plant for this Elegant Grass-Veneer moth is grass, which is found in
abundance in the prairie areas in which the Onosmodium grows. To be fair, I have to admit that these moths
were so abundant that they were probably resting on every plant in the area. I couldn’t move without causing a few to take
flight.
Small, black beetles were on all of the Onosmodium
plants. Most were doing like this fellow
and struggling to negotiate the hairy stalks.
Fireflies are another insect that just use the plant as a
convenient resting structure. Here is a
Photinus species displaying one of the more comical insect faces. This is a common species responsible for much
of the low level flashing seen on summer evenings.
Bumblebees are common visitors to Onosmodium flowers. Most were carrying impressive masses of
pollen. I often see bumblebees spend the
night on nectar plants, so I’m not sure how often they actually return to the
nest or how long it has taken to accumulate all of that pollen.
Southern Cloudy Wings were frequent visitors to the
Onosmodium flowers. Most nectar
gathering insects tend to concentrate on a single plant species that offers an
abundance of flowers. When blooms fade
on that plant species, the insect will begin visiting the next most abundant
nectar source. This habit benefits the
plant by increasing the odds that flower visitors will be carrying the right
pollen for that plant. The Southern Cloudy Wings consistently passed by other
nectar producing species in order to reach the next patch of Onosmodium.
I found many insects in early developmental stages. The best I could do in identifying this
fellow was to determine it to be some type of Hemiptera that is not an
aphid. It was fairly fast moving and
continued to evade my observation.
Small flies were particularly abundant on the
Onosmodium. This Rivellia species
systematically traveled the plant leaf-by-leaf until I inadvertently scared it
off. It rarely paused and I have no idea
what the object of the search may have been.
These two flies were doing a dance on the flower’s exerted
style. One fly would shift its body to
one side and the other would match the maneuver. The body shifts continued for a while and
then one fly took off. As with so many
things I observe, I can’t explain the why behind the behavior, but that doesn’t
make it any less fun to watch.
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