November 17, 2013: Updates

We did have a bout of very cold weather (for us) in which the temperature dipped into the upper 30's. However today has been a wonderful day with temperatures in the low 80's. I went outside to see what I could see. I didn't see any Monarch caterpillars on our Butterfly Weed. Previous to the cold spell I had seen 5 or 6. I did find two Monarch chrysalises though. Also there were two to four Monarch butterflies flying around them. Some were interested in feeding on the nectar from the flowers. I thought these might be newly emerged butterflies getting ready for their trip to Mexico. Here is a picture of one.

Monarch Butterfly on Mexican Butterfly Weed

Others looked like they were laying eggs. I checked the leaves and sure enough I found about 10 eggs. Here is a picture of one.

Monarch Egg

I had not planned on collecting that egg. Yesterday I had found another and I replaced the Monarch egg picture from the internet that I used in an earlier blog, so now all pictures to date on this blog are from me. Thus, I already had a picture of a Monarch egg, although I think this one is a bit better.

If I had seen the egg before I cut off the leaf I probably would have left it there. If you look at the picture you can see an orangish out-of-focus blob at about the 10:00 position with respect to egg. That out-of -focus blob is actually an aphid. It was the aphids that I was trying to collect. I found the egg later on.

Butterfly Weed is eaten not only by Monarch caterpillars but its juices are sucked by the Oleander Aphid (Aphis nerii).

Oleander Aphid (Aphis nerii)

The life cycle of these insects is fascinating to me. I will try to do a blog on it when I have time to organize it. For now I just want to say that they have an affinity for Butterfly Weed and can cause a prodigious infestation.

An infestation of Oleander Aphids on our Butterfly Weed

I did follow up on the Gulf Fritillary eggs.  I searched the Passion Flower vine and I found one caterpillar.

Gulf Fritillary caterpillar

I had seen one prior to the cold spell but I do not think this is the same one. I had mentioned that I was going to keep a look-out for a chrysalis and I found one.

Gulf Fritillary Chrysalis

So now I have good pictures of all 4 life stages of two different butterflies, the Gulf Fritillary and the Monarch. I looked through my old photographs I had taken and found one taken in College Station, TX of a Gulf Fritillary that just emerged from its chrysalis. I thought I might include that with the blog as well.

Gulf Fritillary Butterfly shortly after eclosion

One interesting observation I have made to this point is that Gulf Fritillary butterflies lay their eggs on the top of leaves while Monarchs lay them on the bottoms.

I'm learning a few things. I'm developing techniques to capture and photograph insects. It takes a lot of time and effort, but it is rewarding. I'm proud of the fact that I have been able to provide all the pictures on the blog from my personal files. I'm thinking that this project will be more than enough to keep me busy after I retire in about 8 years or so. Hopefully, by that time I will be able to identify most of the insects I see.

November 10, 2013 - Gulf Fritallary Update

Last week I mentioned that I had seen a Gulf Fritillary Butterfly (Agraulis vanillae) landing on our Passion Flower vine (Passaflora incarnata). Since there were no flowers on the vine I suspected it might be laying eggs. I searched and sure enough found some.

Gulf Fritillary Egg

Today I saw my first caterpillar from the batch of eggs.

Gulf Fritillary Caterpillar

No chrysallis yet, but I'll keep checking. We're expecting some temperatures in the 30's by Tuesday morning, approximately 36 hours from now. I don't know if they'll survive that.

November 3, 2013 -- Short Note

Sorry, don't have a lot of time so let me just post some interesting (at least to me) observations.

Observations:

1. Cooper's Hawk (Accipiter cooperii) on our birdfeeder

• A juvenile Cooper's Hawk landed on our backyard patio and then went to the birdfeeder earlier this week. Our birdfeeder doesn't attract a wide variety of birds, my guess is that he was looking for a nice juicy Mourning Dove (Zenaida macroura) for breakfast. Checking out birdfeeders is evidently  a not unheard-of activity for Cooper's Hawks. Unfortunately, he didn't stay long enough for me to get a picture.

2. Butternut squash (Cucurbita moschata)

• We made a trellis and are trying, with very little success, to grow squash. Right now we are growing butternut squash. The plant produced one very good squash early on and had 6 more small squash growing on it. They all have decided to die. I'm not sure what the problem is. We had quite a bit of rain, perhaps the soil is too wet. On the other hand, perhaps 6 squash was too much for the plant to support and they all died. Any gardners out there that can help me?

3. More Monarchs (Danaus plexippus)

• I am amazed that our small patch of Mexican Butterfly Weed (Asclepius curassavica) continues to host developing Monarchs. 

Two Monarch caterpillars on Mexican Butterfly Weed. The larger one is beginning to form a chrysalis

4. Gulf Fritillary (Agraulis vanillae)

• We have another beautiful large orange butterfly in our area, the Gulf Fritillary.

• I made a pyramidal trellis for the backyard using these plans. We then planted a Passion Flower vine (Passiflora incarnata) in it simply because we like the flower. Yesterday, I noted several Gulf Fritillarys flying around it even though there are no flowers on the vine at the moment. It turns out that Passion Flower vines are host plants for the Gulf Fritillary. I found a dozen or so eggs on the vine.

Gulf Fritillary Egg

Note: Calibration bar in upper left corner is 200 microns

• I hope to follow the development of these eggs over the next few days.

5. Insect capture, a learning experience

• I have two entomology texts that I am using to learn more about insects. They are:
• Gullan PJ, Cranston PS. (2005). The Insects: An Outline of Entomology, 3rd Edition. Blackwell Publishing, Malden , MA
• Chapman RF. (2013). The Insects: Structure and Function, 5th Edition. Simpson SJ, Douglas, AE (eds.). Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK
• I have been reading the anatomy sections. I thought that if I dissected some insects while I was reading those sections I may learn it better. I also thought that I might be able to make slides of insect parts and photograph them and use that as some blog posts in the future. My goal for this weekend was to see how well that would work. My first step was to capture enough large insects so I would have enough material to learn techniques for dissection.
• Suburban developments are not great places to capture large insects. Up to this point I have been dependent upon any that happen to come into my backyard. However, the area that I live is flat and subject to occasional heavy rains. Back in the 1990's we had a tropical storm -- Allison -- dump 24 to 30 inches of rain in a single day. As you might imagine, our area can experience occasional flooding. To mitigate the impact of flooding our development have areas in which basins have been excavated to hold water, retention ponds, resulting from downpours. This means that there are areas in which there are no houses. It so happens that there is a nice large retention pond behind our subdivision. It is an insect haven. So I decided to take my insect net and see what I could capture.
• This is not a good time of the year to capture large insects. The weather is beginning to cool and insects are beginning to hibernate. There aren't a whole lot of insects and they aren't jumping up to expose themselves. In order to maximize my capture I decided to do some sweep-netting. That is, I walk through un-mowed grass sweeping the net side-to-side in front of me. I can capture a lot of insects that way. However, I capture a lot of grass as well.
• I don't have any kill jars. I kill the insects by putting them into a -20^oF freezer for several hours. I collected a net-full of insects, put the net into the freezer for about 5 minutes. Then transferred them to a large jar. And put the jar back into the freezer. That was yesterday.
• Today I took them out. I poured the collection into a tray and have them in upstairs. I have been trying to separate the insects from the plant material for the past several hours. Insects have setae on their bodies and spines on their legs. These do a remarkably good job of holding onto plant material. It is almost like doing a dissection just to try to get the plant material off the insects before I get down to the actual dissection.
• I still need to do a lot more separating, so to this point I have not done any dissection of the insects and it is getting late. I need to go to work tomorrow. I'm not retired yet.