Ladybugs Make Me Smile

A few weeks ago, I was having a terrible day at work. The next day, my friend and colleague, Kristina Lockaby,  brought me a card that said, "Ladybugs make me smile." This is so true.

A recent ladybug that made me smile REALLY big, was one that our Head Gardener, Richard Hayden, found. He was out in the urban wilderness and stopped a moment to take a closer look at one of the willow shrubs. He noticed lots of aphids and a few ladybugs too. One in particular stood out to him. It was all black with two red spots on it, something he had never seen before on a ladybug.

He put the little beetle in a snap top jar and brought it up to our shared office. "Lila, I have a present for you!" he exclaimed as he came in. I immediately stopped staring blankly at my computer screen and turned to see what booty he was bringing in from the garden. He silently handed me the jar, I took a look, and I smiled.

Richard had collected a twice-stabbed ladybug. These ladybugs are so named for their color and pattern. Unlike most ladybugs, they are black with red spots. Two red spots to be precise, and that according to some, look like the poor little beastie had been stabbed by some sadistic Homo sapiens.

I'd previously found one of these ladybugs in a similar location, but before the garden had even been planted. However, taking a close look at the specimen Richard had handed me, I realized it was a little bit different. The spots were much larger, of a slightly different shape, and overall there was just something that made me think, "Mmmmmm, maybe this is a different type of twice-stabbed ladybug."

And it was!

Twice-stabbed Ladybug, Chilocorus cacti

This brings the total number of ladybugs in the garden to eight! Check out one of our previous ladybug blogs to see what other species we have found, or how about this one?

Check out our submission on the Lost Ladybug project website!

Twelve Days of Christmas 2012

Since tomorrow is the twelfth day of Christmas, I thought I'd give you your belated gifts. Of course they're all part of L.A.'s surprising biodiversity, yes even those turtle wasps!

Twelve weevils wandering

Eleven pepsis wasps piping

Ten spiders-a-leaping

Nine ground squirrels dancing

Eight ants-a-milking (though technically they should be milking aphids)

Seven spittlebugs-a-spitting

Six roaches-a-laying (down that is)

Five under wings

Four warbling birds

Three French (phorid) flies

Two turtle wasps

And a hawk in a pear infested pond

Wishing you a happy New Year...what urban nature will we find this year?

New Fly Species Likes to Party It Up Poolside in Brentwood

I've been scratching my head for a story to tell in this week's blog. At 6:20 last night it hit me! I've never related our Curator of Entomology, Brian Brown's, story of how he discovered a brand new species of fly, right here in Los Angeles! That's right folks, undiscovered fly species are here right under your noses — oh and don't forget that one that  flew into your eyeball, maybe that was new to science too, I guess next time you should try to save it!

All kidding aside, there are likely hundreds of new species scientists have never discovered before, right here in L.A.. Brian is famous here at the Museum for saying, "It's just as likely to find a new species to science in L.A., as it is in Costa Rica [where he does a lot of his research], 100%."

All you have to do is look at the numbers. Scientists have described almost a million different species of insects. However, they estimate that there may be anywhere between 9 and 29 million yet to be described! And this is just the insects we're talking about people. A New York Times article that came out last year noted that, "A single spoonful of soil may contain 10,000 different species of bacteria, many of which are new to science."

Back to Brian and his flies. Not everyone believed Brian when he told them he could find loads of interesting and new species here in L.A.. To prove that urban environments can be a frontier of discovery, he set up an experiment.

In a Brentwood backyard, he set up a Malaise trap — a tent-like device that captures flying insects in a large jar of alcohol, a.k.a. "jar of death." One week later he visited the backyard again, collected the jar full of insects, took it back to the lab, and separated out all the phorid flies (that's the family of flies that Brian is a world specialist on).

Poolside Malaise Trap 

"Jar of death"

Sitting at his microscope, Brian pulled out a small (~2mm in length) yellow phorid fly that looked interesting. To identify these flies, you have to dissect them and take them through a special fly key, that asks the you to look for crazy characteristics like laterally flattened hind femoras. So Brian popped the head off the fly and stuck it under the microscope. He took the small fly through the entire key and it didn't match anything — this was a brand new species to science, it had never been described before, and it was the very FIRST fly he had looked at! 

Brian's new fly species

Brian pulled out a second fly from the sample and repeated the process. This specimen was similarly small, but brown instead. It also had a characteristic he recognized, the penultimate tarsal segment (a.k.a. second to last segment of an insect leg) was shorter than the last one. This is a characteristic common to a species only known from Europe. Brian took it through the key, and it was indeed the European species. Which, might I add, had never before been recorded in the U.S.!

European flies have a certain je ne sais quoi!

Wait, wait there's more! Seriously, as Brian kept looking he found a third interesting fly in the sample. This fly was a male from the genus Chonocephalus. This fly is from both coasts of Africa, the Seychelles and Canary islands to be exact. This was the very FIRST time it had been discovered outside of that native range! 

Chonocephalus, African phorid fly

So, by looking at only three, seemingly inconsequential flies, Brian had made three scientific discoveries, which have since then been published in well-known journals. Imagine what a month of sampling might uncover, or a year, or what about three year's worth of sampling!

This is exactly what the Museum has funded Brian and a group of other Museum scientists to do. Brian and his crew have dubbed the project BioSCAN (BIOdiveristy Science: City And Nature).

Here's what the BioSCAN website has to say about the project:

"This first-of-its-kind scientific investigation will discover and explore biodiversity in and around one of the world's largest cities: Los Angeles. In three years of sampling from the urban core right out through less-urban surrounding areas, we will focus on the insects, the most diverse group of animals on our planet.

We will discover and document the diversity of insect species living with us in Los Angeles as well as test intriguing hypotheses about how natural areas around the city affect its biodiversity, and specifically, how light in the urban environment is affecting its inhabitants."

Wow! I can't wait to hear what they find.

Weevil is as Weevil Does: Total Agave Meltdown

I don't know about you, but I'm not freaking out about the end of the world on December 21. Though, I can tell you "who" should be – those agave plants, that's who! So much so, that if I was magically turned into an agave plant tomorrow, I'd totally start partying it up in preparation for total meltdown. Seriously though, agave meltdown is no joke. It's a very real disease that is highly lethal to agave plants and we've just discovered it in the Museum's garden!

It all came about last week. Richard Hayden and Daniel Feldman, the Museum's garden staff, noticed that some of our Agave americana plants weren't looking so hot. Some plants had a few leaves that were wrinkled and beginning to discolor, others were so bad they weren't able to stand up straight anymore. Experimentally, Daniel tugged on a leaf of one of the sick agaves, and surprisingly the entire plant came out of the ground in his hand! What they discovered beneath the surface was not pretty. The roots had become completely unattached and the heart of the plant was a goopy mess of rottenness. Something indeed was rotten in the heart of the Museum Garden!

What sort of "evil" could cause such destruction? Weevil evil, that's what! Upon closer inspection, Richard and Daniel found an aggregation of largish black weevils (about ½ inch long) hanging out in between the plants' leaves. To be specific, they were agave snout weevils, Scyphophorus acupunctatus, and they're proving to be a big problem in the agave world.

Here's what The Desert Botanical Garden in Phoenix has to say about agave snout weevils:

"The females chew their way into the plant base, often between leaf attachments, leaving bacteria (Erwinia sp.) as they go. They lay eggs in the bacteria-infected tunnel. When the eggs hatch, the larvae burrow and eat their way into the rotting heart of the agave. After the grub-like larvae have sufficiently fed and matured they will pupate and emerge as the next generation of adults. The entire life cycle can be completed in six to twelve weeks. Adults are approximately 1/2" in length with dull brown to black stout bodies and characteristic long snouts. The rotund legless grubs are cream color with dark heads.

Most often a snout weevil infestation is not apparent until the damage is severe. As larvae start to feed at the bacterial-infested plant bases and the roots, leaves begin to wrinkle. Shriveling will increase with time and as the plant continues to rot. A putrid odor can develop as bacterial infection creeps through the heart of the plant. In many cases a majority of the leaves collapse to the ground leaving only the central spike of leaves standing. The plant might be loose if wiggled and can easily fall apart. At this stage rescue is unlikely."

When the Museum garden staff realized that this was likely the fate of many of our agaves, they, needless to say, weren't very happy. In just a short week they've wholeheartedly joined the ranks of agave snout weevil haters everywhere. Of course, they have been madly searching for ways to deal with this pest. Most of the literature out there advises continued applications of the insecticide imadacloprid. This chemical is applied around the base of a plant and is taken up via the roots which then imparts toxicity to any insect that happens to eat the plant (including pollinators when they sip nectar). Needless to say, we want to stay away from chemical pesticides as much as possible. Unfortunately, we haven't found any good leads on organic controls, but we'll keep looking.

After hearing all this, being the good friend and coworker that I am, I offered to buy the garden staff a bottle of Mezcal! No, it wasn't to drown their unhappiness in, it was instead to take revenge! The "worm" in the bottom of a bottle of Mezcal is actually very often an agave snout weevil grub. That's right, they could relish in chomping off the head of our weevils' long lost great aunt's nephew or something. Cheers to that!

Daniel removing an infected Agave americana

Daniel dissected the above agave and this is what we found inside!

Close up of agave snout weevil, Scyphophorus acupunctatus.

Even knowing the back story, I still think it's cute.

A Plague of Grasshoppers on Figueroa?

Recently, our garden staff has been finding LOADS of grasshoppers, but what are they all doing here? Are grasshoppers good for our gardens, or are they destructive like the plague of locusts (a swarming variety of grasshoppers in the family Acrididae) that appear in the Bible?

On November 14, I snapped a decent picture of a grasshopper hanging out on a pitcher sage plant, Lepechinia fragrans. I thought I'd have a crack at identifying it, and hoped that, through the process, I'd be able to figure out what exactly they're doing in the garden.

Not a bad picture for my camera phone!

Armed with a trusty book, the Field Guide to Grasshoppers, Katydids, and Crickets of the United States, I began my quest. It was a long and arduous quest, seriously! I spent almost an hour (okay, I know, I'm prone to hyperbole) going through the pictoral key, comparing my photo with the beautifully drawn pictures, and then cross-referencing with the species accounts, and range maps (they really helped me eliminate quite a few species straight away). Alas, it was all to no avail!

Not to be outdone by a "lowly" grasshopper (am I a dork because I couldn't write lowly without quotes? I don't want the grasshopper to feel bad), I turned to the INTERNET! Bugguide.net to be exact. I submitted the above picture to their ID request section on November 20, at 11:55am. Eight days, 10 hours, and 17 minutes later, the quest was over. Thanks to David J. Ferguson for the species identification, and a shout out to my homie Eric R. Eaton for helping too! This is a female Melanoplus yarrowii grasshopper, a.k.a. Yarrow's spur-throated grasshopper.

Okay, so now I had an identification. "So what," you may ask? Well, first and foremost, I felt vindicated. This species wasn't even in the field guide I was using, no wonder I couldn't ID it! Secondly, now that I knew the name, I could find out what this bug was all about.

What I discovered is that this grasshopper is indeed very closely related to the plaguing locusts of yore. I also found out that, in the late 1860s, we had our very own plague of grasshoppers right here in Los Angeles, and it lasted on and off for almost three years. According to Brian Brown, Curator of Entomology, the grasshoppers responsible for the plague was most likely Melanoplus devastator, though there aren't any actual specimens for us to examine to be sure. Whatever the exact species, these grasshoppers were apparently pretty devastating.

"When they had devoured all vegetation where they originated, they took flight and, flying with the wind moved in great clouds towards the east –like the locusts of Egypt, devouring everything in their course. When the destroying hosts reached the Calle de Las Chapules, the vinatero knew his grape crop for that season was doomed. The voracious hopper would not leave a green leaf on his vines, and the vineyardist considered himself fortunate if the destroying host did not devour the bark as well as the leaves." That's JM Guinn, author of The Plan of Old Los Angeles and the Story of its Highways and Byways.¹ The Calle de Las Chapules he is referring to is the former name of part of what is today Figueroa Street. That's right, it was called Grasshopper Street. Next time you're stuck in traffic on Fig, just imagine a massive swarm of grasshoppers descending on your car, I assure you, it will take away any road rage you might have!

Thankfully, the Yarrow's grasshopper I found is not of the swarming locust variety. It does feed on plants, and is likely chowing down on various shoots and leaves out there in our garden. As far as the gardeners can tell me though, they're not causing much damage. So we're leaving them there to live another day, eat some more leaves, lay a few eggs, pose for a few more pictures, and maybe a few of them will become lunch for a hungry bird!

¹ From the Historical Society of Southern California's Annual Publication Volume 3, 1893-96.

*Special thanks to Margaret Hardin, Curator of Anthropology for information on our Los Angeles grasshopper plague; Brian Brown, Curator of Entomology for identification of said grasshopper, and to Jonathan Gillet, Gallery Interpreter, for giving me the lead to the L.A. plague story!

Thanksgiving for the Butter-butt (but not the Butterballs)!

Hold your horses...give me a moment to clarify this title, I'm talking about birds here! When I say "butter-butt" I'm actually referring to a small grey songbird that has a bright yellow patch on its derrière (yes, this really is what dorky birders like myself call this bird when we're out birding). In particular, I'm talking about the below pictured butter-butt, that narrowly escaped death — hence the giving of thanks. In contrast, all those Butterball turkeys won't be giving much thanks. But hey, maybe you'll be inclined to give some on their behalf!

If this bird had a speech bubble, what would it be saying?

This is what Museum bird expert, Kimball Garrett, has to say about butter-butts, a.k.a. Yellow-rumped warblers:

"There’s hardly a surer sign of the approach of winter in the Los Angeles Region than the arrival en masse of Yellow-rumped Warblers (Setophaga coronata) throughout our lowlands in October. These hyperactive 12 gram songbirds breed widely in conifer forests of North America, and migrate in immense numbers to the southern United States (with some continuing as far south as Central America). In our area birds of the western 'Audubon’s' subspecies predominate. One secret to the success of this species is its generalized diet. Our fall and winter birds glean insects from vegetation or the ground, but also sally into the air to catch flying insects; they’ll also take nectar from a variety of flowers (winter-flowering eucalypts are especially preferred) and take their share of small berries as well. You’ll recognize Yellow-rumped Warblers by the eponymous color patch, as well as other yellow patches on the throat, the sides, and (usually hidden) the center of the crown, and white flashes at the corners of the tail. Grayish overall in their relatively subdued basic (“winter”) plumage, males don a brighter black, yellow and white plumage for the breeding season.

Mortality in most small migratory songbirds of temperate regions is astonishingly high over the first year — often approaching or exceeding 75%. In urban areas, collisions with human-built structures is an important cause of mortality, with glass windows accounting for a large proportion of these deaths. Some scientists have estimated that up to a billion birds are killed each year in the USA alone by such collisions. The hapless Yellow-rumped Warbler that hit a window by the Dinosaur Hall is, unfortunately, hardly alone."

Hapless as this butter-butt may have been, it was one of the lucky ones, it revived and flew away some hours later. I wonder where it is now, how many insects and small berriers it has eaten since, and if it's learned to stay away from windows? Although, you won't be eating any insects (at least not knowingly) at your Thanksgiving feast, and you probably aren't rejoicing in life after narrowly esaping death-by-window, you probably have a lot of other reasons to give thanks. Go give 'em!

Massive Black Fly aka Mexican Cactus Fly

Earlier this week I was outside being interviewed about Entomophagy, the practice of eating bugs. While they were setting up the camera and sound equipment I took a few moments to see what insects were visiting the bright yellow flowers on the bush I was standing next to. Among the usual honeybees, I saw a massive black fly. This fly was huge (3/4 of an inch in length) and really stood out against the yellow flowers.

It was a Mexican cactus fly, Copestylum mexicanum, feeding on nectar, and this was the first time I had seen them around the Museum!

Here's what Flower Flies of Los Angeles County book has to say about them:
"This is the largest flower fly in Southern California, with a body length of 18mm. It gets its name from the larvae that feed in wet decaying prickly pear cactus. Adults are commonly seen feeding on flowers. Although it resembles some carpenter bees this species looks more like a large horse fly. The Mexican cactus fly is found from the southern USA to Central America, but related cactus-feeding flower flies are found in Mexico and South America. Many other species of the large genus Copestylum are found in our area. None of them resemble the cactus fly; instead they mimic bees and other stinging insects. All feed on decaying organic matter."

*Thanks to Museum Curator of Entomology, Brian Brown, for identifying the fly!