An online resource based on the award-winning nature guide


Mossy Rose Gall Wasp Larvae Cease Feeding

10-31-14 mossy rose gall IMG_0404In the spring, the 4mm-long cynipid gall wasp, Diplolepis rosae, lays up to 60 eggs (through parthenogenesis) inside the leaf bud of a rose bush. A week later, the eggs hatch and the larvae begin feeding on the leaf bud. This stimulates the abnormal growth of plant tissue, and a Mossy Rose Gall, covered with a dense mass of sticky branched filaments, is formed. The gall provides the larvae with food and shelter through the summer. In late October, when the Mossy Rose Gall is at its most colorful, the larvae stop eating and pass into the prepupal stage, in which they overwinter inside the gall. In February or March, the prepupae undergo a final molt and become pupae. If the pupae aren’t extracted and eaten by a bird during the winter or parasitized by another insect, adult wasps exit the gall in the spring and begin the cycle all over again.


Saddleback Caterpillars Preparing to Pupate



Milkweed Tussock Moth Caterpillars Feeding

milkweed tussock moth2 038Female milkweed tussock moths lay their eggs in masses on the underside of milkweed and dogbane leaves, which their larvae will eat. The hatching caterpillars are gray and hairy, but in no time they have developed the tufts of hairs that give them their name and make them resemble little mops. When still fairly young, the siblings stay together, skeletonizing the leaves they consume, leaving only the strongest veins that contain sticky latex. As they mature, the caterpillars tend to wander, and it’s unusual to find large groups of them on a single leaf. At this point they often cut through a vein in order to prevent the latex from reaching the area of the leaf where they are feeding. (Older monarch caterpillars use this same tactic.) Like monarchs, milkweed tussock moths, because they’ve consumed the cardiac glycosides contained in milkweed and dogbane leaves, are toxic to predators.


Goldenrod Bunch Gall




Second Brood of Woolly Bears Hatches



Antlions Trapping Insects





Tortoise Beetle Larvae Making Fecal Shields

8-1-14  tortoise beetle larva with fecal shield 049Instead of discarding feces, or frass, some insects save their waste matter for defensive purposes such as “fecal shields.” These are coverings over the back of the larvae that are made largely of feces and provide either physical or chemical barriers to predation. Adult Tortoise Beetles have a type of shield (hence, their name), but it is formed from expanded, hardened forewings, and is not a fecal shield. The larvae of these beetles have fecal shields which serve as chemical deterrents, preventing most predators from even touching them. The deterrent in the feces comes from the beetles’ food source — plants in the order Solanales. Tortoise Beetle larvae have what is known as a “fecal fork” on their last abdominal segment, which they hold over their body. The larvae maneuvers its muscular, telescopic anus, or “anal turret” in such a manner as to excrete its feces and bits of shed exoskeleton onto the fecal fork, forming an umbrella-like fecal shield.



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