Restarting the Blog

June 3, 2017

It has been 4 years since I have posted anything on this blog. The original purpose of this blog was to give me something meaningful to do in retirement. I planned to monitor insects around my house and post the observations on the blog. The idea was to document any changes that may be happening and see if they correspond to climate change. I thought I could make it such that it could be a small contribution to scientific knowledge.

I still think that and that remains the long-term goal here. I am still working full-time and don't have the time to put into it right now. I have vastly increased my knowledge of insects since I last posted ... mainly by reading biological textbooks and trying to identify pictures of insects that I have taken in the backyard. I am 66 years old and don't know how much longer I will be working, but retirement isn't imminent.

However, something else not directly related to that project has happened that makes me want to blog. It happened a while back, November 8, 2016. Donald Trump got elected President of the United States.

There is an outrage in this country that I didn't appreciate. It is an outrage that even now, I do not fully understand. It is an outrage that is sparking a backlash of opposing outrage that is in my opinion a potential existential threat to my way of life. By not understanding it, I think I am in a small way contributing to it.

I certainly bear some responsibility for this. Politics is certainly not my forte. I am politically liberal, but I haven't followed politics as closely as I follow many other things. When this most recent election cycle began, the Republicans -- who have a long history of science denial is more and therefore people I generally oppose -- were in disarray. They had a mass of candidates. I thought Jeb Bush was most likely going to be their candidate. The one candidate that I thought was dangerous for this country was the Senator from my state of Texas, Ted Cruz. I have followed him somewhat and believe him to be duplicitous and willing to sacrifice anything in order to maintain power. His rise from political obscurity to a most-talked-about member of the Senate scared me. I didn't want him to be the nominee. I thought almost anyone would be better.

When the Texas primary rolled around on SuperTuesday, March 1, 2016. Bush was effectively gone. I thought Rubio would probably be nominee, but if not Rubio I thought it would probably be Cruz. I heard a political pundit comment about the Trump juggernaut. He implied that Trump had a chance of beating Cruz in Texas. Here comes my culpability.

I reasoned that in the primary Hillary Clinton -- my preferred candidate -- was going to win in Texas and was going to be the Democratic nominee no matter what. I now wish it had been Bernie Sanders, but that ship has sailed. I thought that my vote for Hillary would not be particularly meaningful. However, if Trump beat Cruz in Texas, then Cruz would be eliminated from the race and my biggest fear would be gone. Texas has an open primary so I could vote in the Republican primary, so I did. I voted for Trump.

It didn't do any good. Cruz won Texas anyway. Trump won most of the other SuperTuesday states and established himself as the front runner. I was not too concerned. I still at that time did not take Trump seriously as a candidate. At that time I still did not seriously consider that he would be the Repulican nominee. I was still most worried about Cruz.

As the election process progressed, I saw the Trump juggernaut roll on. I still did not take him seriously as a candidate. He kept doing things that would kill the candidacy of ... anybody. He said things like he could go on the street and kill someone and get away with it. He said his celebrity status allowed him to grab women by the pussy and they would allow it. He tweeted that global warming was a hoax created by the Chinese and then denied he said even though one could google the tweet. It was a joke he said, when clearly it wasn't. He straight out lied.

I thought it had to catch up to him sometime. There was no way he could come out as the nominee. But he did. I did worry about it a little at that time. The idea that he was 50% of the people who had a realistic chance of being the next President of the United States scared me ... but only a bit.

The Democrats had treated Bernie Sanders unfairly, and Hillary had a lot of Clinton negatives in the general public, but there was no way people would elect Trump, who was clearly not qualified to be anything in public service over her.

I felt this way up to the point where James Comey announced he would renew the investigation into her Benghazi emails a week before Election Day. Then when he announced that nothing had come of it a day or two before Election Day, I again became reasonably confident that Hillary would win.

I did give Trump a chance. The campaign had been stressful, but Trump had done himself no favors ... or so I thought. No one, not even me, was happy with the candidates. I thought it ironic that elections are popularity contests and somehow during this election cycle we had the two most unpopular people running come election time that I had ever seen. Due to Hillary's negatives, I thought Trump had a chance. But, if I am going to be honest, I didn't think it would be much of a chance.

Then came Election Day. I voted for Hillary. I went home and began to listen to the news. I was a bit anxious, but I hoped that early returns would relieve the anxiety. It did not. Hillary wasn't doing as well as expected. Long before the race was called, I decided she was going to lose. I went to bed.

But I didn't sleep. How could this have happened? I lay in bed and couldn't get this out of my mind. I was ... and I don't think this is too strong a word for what I was feeling ... horrified. I remember telling someone that I thought Hillary had the potential to be a great President. She would be the first female President. She had the experience working with Congress and if Trump took down the Republicans like I at one time thought he would, and she had a Democratic Congress, she could have 2 years to give people a reason to vote for her again. I also said that I thought that even though she had the potential to be a great President, she was probably going to be an ineffectual one. I had come to the conclusion that Congress was going to remain in Republican hands and with the country so politically divided there would be little she could accomplish. I told the person that I thought Trump had the potential to be our last President. He has now been President for over 4 months, and I think he has taken unbelievable strides toward achieving just that. I don't think it probable. I think our country has the resources to survive 4 (hopefully not 8) years of Trump. But I was wrong about Hillary's probable victory, I think it is possible I am wrong about our ability to survive Trump.

But, the most important question is, "How did this happen?" Coming from my side of the political spectrum there are plenty of theories. Certainly the Comey thing played a big role. Fake news played a role. A large part of that fake news came from the Russians who very much wanted Trump to win. But I think this all misses the main reason. I don't think any of these things would have been effective if there weren't a large underlying sense of frustration out there. I believe there was a huge number of people who felt ignored and ridiculed by people ... like me. I think Hillary's comment about a huge number of Trump's supporters being "the deplorables" hurt her more than is generally recognized.

I know I didn't take these people seriously. I just thought they were wrong and that being right generally wins out in the long run and things would work out. I don't think that anymore. It is not so simple as being right or wrong. Opinions are not based on facts limited to the topic at hand. They are based on feelings that are derived from experiences that may have no direct tie to the topic at hand. I think it is important to understand these as well.

Again, I think our country is facing a huge threat from the Trump administration. We are a dangerously divided country. There are frustrated people whose frustrations I do not fully understand. I am now a frustrated person and I doubt if these people truly understand my frustrations. If we can understand each other, we can certainly survive this. We still may not agree, but we will not vilify each other; areas of mutual interest will become apparent in which we can make this a better country for all of us. In words to paraphrase Trump, we can make America great again. Right now, it seems to me we are hellbent on making Russia great again.

I want to do some blogging that voice my concerns. I hope that Trump supporters will engage in a dialog. I want to understand their concerns. I want them to understand mine. This will not be easy because I am sure there will be areas that we are diametrically opposed. Areas that will be hard for us to respond in a reasoned way. I know that the anonymity of the internet does foster a mean-spiritedness that would never occur if we to talk face-to-face. But it also offers a chance to explain things in detail that is difficult to obtain in face-to-face talks. The longer time between responses allows one to better consider what the person is truly trying to say. The conversation is less likely to go off into tangents. Emotional responses can be reconsidered. There is a written record of what has been said so misunderstandings can be more easily corrected. And finally other people can read the conversation and make their own judgements.

I hope to make weekly contributions to this blog. I suspect readership will grow very slowly but who knows. In any case, it will give me familiarity with this blogging environment, so that once I do retire and begin the project for which I initially developed it things will go smoother.

***NOTE***

I am having problems using the Blogger editor with my iPad. My WordPress App works much better so I am transferring this to a blog there https://neosocraticdialogues.wordpress.com/

Thank you for your time.

December 1, 2013

I haven't had time to post anything now for two weeks. Part of the reason, of course, was the time spent eating and enjoying the company of family over the Thanksgiving holiday. But the fact that I haven't posted anything doesn't mean that I haven't been busy in my spare time doing things to allow me to achieve the goal of documenting some of the biodiversity around the neighborhood.

I have decided to concentrate on insects since that is where the greatest diversity lies and where so little is known that I can have the real possibility of making a contribution to our knowledge. Unfortunately, I am not all that knowledgeable about insects. But ignorance is curable. It takes study. Indeed, I have bought the late Ross H. Arnett's book American Insects: A Handbook of Insects of America North of Mexico. I did that because BugGuide.net, the best source for insect identification I have found on the internet, says that if one is going to be serious about insect identification one needs the book. And since I don't see how I can document insect diversity without being able to identify the insects then I am going to have to be serious about insect identification.

Arnett called his book a "Handbook". Maybe so, but it certainly requires large hands. It has 931 pages of text not including the Glossary and Index ... if you add those -- and I certain will be using them about as much as the text -- then the page total jumps to 1003.

I have read Part I of the book; the first 6 chapters. Part II contains 31 more chapters each dealing with a particular order of the insects and is the major part of the book. But one doesn't read those until one needs to identify an insect in a particular order.

Chapter 5 of the book is on insect collection techniques and it is what I have been trying to get down (along with picking up tidbits of insect anatomy that will be crucial when I try to identify unfamiliar insects). One thing I particularly need to do is take better field notes. I was going to put them into a tablet so I could search them, but I find that too cumbersome. I'm too old to be a texting whiz like my son. So I have bought a field notebook that I write things in by hand. For me, it is a noticeable improvement.

I have also been capturing some common insects and trying to pin them. I do this because I need to improve my techniques and I have no one to teach me. I feel like I'm reinventing some very old wheels, and by that I mean I do more poor jobs of pinning than I do good ones. But, I DO do some good ones and the good ones are beginning to come more frequently. So I'm learning.

I'm also playing around with the microscope camera. The documentation sucks, so spend most of my time trying different things until I figure out how to do what I want it to do. And although the documentation sucks, I am pleased with all the things it can do.

Finally, I have been trying to accumulate the things I will need. So far I have gotten:

1. An insect net.
2. Insect pins
3. Insect pinning block
4. Kill jars
5. Dissecting equipment
6. An insect loupe
7. Microscope camera
8. Microscope stage (to allow me to easily position a pinned insect so I can photograph whatever body part I want)
9. Specimen jars and labels.

Much of that stuff I've made on my own, other I have bought. So things are coming along, but I have a very long way to go. But almost every day I learn something new.

I solved a small point of confusion for me just today. I captured and pinned a Honey Bee (Apis mellifera). I know bees are in the order Hymenoptera. I also know that hymenopterans, when they have wings (ants are in that order and only drones and newly hatched queens have wings), have two pairs of wings. The forewings are on the second thoracic segment and the hindwings are on the third. However, when I take macro pictures of bees they seem to me to have only two wings. Further, there are several species of flies who make it a point to imitate bees and flies only have two wings; a pair that corresponds to the forewings of hymenoptera and come off the second thoracic segment -- the pair that would come off the third thoracic segment in flies is greatly reduced in size and function as flight stabilizers not as wings.

So I've never really understood how bees can have 4 wings but look so much like they only have two. Now I know.

Close-up view of the area of overlap between the forewing and hindwing of a Honey Bee

I have uploaded that image in its full detail. You can get a better view if you click on the picture. What this picture shows is the overlap of the forewing and the hindwing of the Honey Bee. If you look closely about 80% of the way to the top you can see some serrations. These are on the hindwing. They are actually little hooks that attach to the forewings making the two wings act in unison. That is why bees can have four wings but look for all the world that they have just two. The forewing and the hindwing act as though they are a single wing. That I think is pretty neat.

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.

October 27, 2013 - Monarch Butterflies

My wife and I are trying to attract butterflies to our backyard. We are doing that by planting specific types of plants. One of our plants, the Mexican Butterfly Weed (Asclepias curassavica), attracts Monarch butterflies and has pretty red and yellow flowers. It has worked well for us. I have seen at 15 Monarch catepillars, 4 chrysalis, and 3 adults emerge because of them this year.

Mexican Butterfly Weed from our backyard

Evolution has filled nature with a plethora of ironies. Milkweed plants have tried to make themselves unappealing as food by making themselves poisonous. They produce chemicals called cardiac glycosides. In order for living cells to thrive they need to maintain an electrochemical gradient across their membranes. They do this in large parts by pumping sodium ions (Na⁺ ) out and potassium ions (K⁺) in. To do that they have a protein pump (Na/K pump) embedded in their membranes. Cardiac glycosides prevent that protein pump from working.

The first of evolution's ironies is that humans through the use of their ingenuity have managed to use the poisons to SAVE lives. Digoxin, another cardiac glycoside from the foxglove, Digitalis lanata, is used to treat congestive heart failure. In congestive heart failure the heart does not contract forcefully enough. The heart is a muscle, and muscles need calcium ions (Ca⁺⁺) to contract. It turns out that in heart muscle there is another protein pump (Na/Ca exchanger) that exchanges Ca⁺⁺ with Na⁺. By blocking the Na/K pump, sodium builds up on the inside. Some of this extra sodium can be removed by the Na/Ca exchanger. The consequence of that is that there is more Ca⁺⁺ inside the cell. More Ca⁺⁺ inside the cell means the heart is able to contract more forcefully.

The second of evolution's ironies is what gives the plant its common name, Butterfly Weed. One of the biggest predators on plants is insects. Cardiac glycosides do repel many insects and it is almost certainly the case that insect predation was the selective factor most responsible for the development of the genetic machinery within the plant to produce the poisons. However, milkweed plants like the Butterfly Weed are the sole food of Monarch larva.

Certainly if you were to look at our plants you would be hard pressed to show evidence that the cardiac glycosides were effective against insect predation. Indeed, they are not. It is BECAUSE the plant produces those toxins that the Monarch larva (aka catepillars) eat it.

Monarch catepillar on our Butterfly Weed

The adult female Monarch lays her egg specifically on a milkweed plant. Unfortunately, I don't have a good picture of the Monarch egg so I'll need to use one from the web. (I found a Monarch egg and took my own picture of it today 11/16/13)

 Monarch egg

About 4 days after the egg is laid, it hatches into a catepillar, the larval stage of a butterfly.

Monarch catepillar

The catepillar eats the leaves of the milkweed. Instead of being poisoned by the cardiac glycosides the catepillar incorporates them into his tissues. The poisons will remain in its system for the rest of its life making it unpalatable for birds, one of the major predators on butterflies. The catepillar eats the milkweed for about 2 weeks. At that point it will find a place to attach itself and form a chrysalis or pupa.

Monarch chrysalis

Although the chrysalis above is attached to a milkweed plant, not all of them have. Sometimes the catepillar moves away from the plant and attaches itself elsewhere. We found one chrysalis across the yard, 40 feet away from the Butterfly Weeds ... a long crawl for a catepillar. It will stay in the pupa for about 10 days

Monarch chrysalis on day 9

In the above picture you can clearly see the adult Monarch developing. Here it is shortly after eclosion ... the emergence of an adult butterfly from its pupal casing.

Adult Monarch shortly after eclosion

It is well known that Monarchs migrate. One could say that they start off overwintering in the south ... California, for the ones west of the Rocky Mountains - Mexico for the ones east of the Rocky Mountains. They then range as far north as Canada before returning back to their overwintering grounds. However, it is not the original butterfly that returns to the overwintering grounds. It is the great-great grandchildren of the original butterflies, or the fourth generation that return.

The first generation comes from eggs laid by parents that overwintered in the south. They hatch in March or April. After eclosion they begin their flight north feeding off of flowers and trying to find mates. They live only 2 to 6 weeks. The second generation butterflies are born further north during May or June. The third generation is born in July or August. Like the first generation, the second and the third live 2 to 6 weeks. The fourth generation is born in September and October. These are the ones that make it back to the overwintering grounds. They are also blessed with a much longer life, 6 to 8 months (although much of that extra time is taken up by hibernation). The ones I took the pictures of above are all fourth generation Monarchs.

One question that must arise is, "Why do Monarchs migrate?" The answer seems to be that they are following the milkweed. The milkweed does not grow year around in their overwintering homes. It blooms later in the year further north. Note that the adults do not feed on milkweed, it is only the larval catepillars. But the effectiveness of the cardiac glycosides lasts for a lifetime. In fact, it is so good that it even protects other butterflies. As birds learn that Monarchs are toxic then any other species of butterfly that looks like a Monarch will also benefit. This is called mimicry.

Viceroy Butterfly photographed at Brazos Bend State Park

The above picture is not a Monarch butterfly. It is instead a Viceroy (Limenitis archippus). Viceroys are slightly smaller than a Monarch, but in the field unless the two butterflies are side-by-side, that size difference is unlikely to distinguish them. The way I distinguish them is by the extra black line on the hindwing of the Viceroy. 

The Monarchs belong to the milkweed butterflies (Subfamily Danainae). That group not only includes the Monarch, but also the Queen (D. gilippus) and the Soldier (D. eresimus).  Below is a picture of a Queen; unfortunately, I do not have a good picture of a Soldier.

Queen

As you can see the Queen is on a Mexican Butterfly Weed. It (and the Soldier) also lays its eggs on milkweed plants. Their eggs, catepillars, and pupae look very similar to that of the Monarch. They too are toxic and gain their toxicity the same way as does the Monarch. 

However, Viceroys are closely related to the Admirals (sorry no pictures). They lay their eggs on willow trees not milkweed. They do ingest cardiac glycosides to become toxic. Neither their eggs, catepillars, or pupae look anything like the catepillar and pupa of Monarchs. Yet while they all look somewhat similar it is the adult Viceroy looks more like the adult Monarch than do either the Queen or the Soldier.

Biologists recognize two forms of mimicry: Batesian and Muellerian mimicry. In Batesian mimicry a non-toxic species gains an advantage by mimicking a toxic species. In Muellerian mimicry similar toxic species benefit from shared appearance.

Thus, the similarities between the closely-related Monarchs, Queens, and Soldiers could be ascribed to Muellerian mimicry. But what about the mimicry between the Viceroy and the Monarch? The answer to that question is not fully clear. For a long time it was considered the textbook example of Batesian mimicry, but the evidence now points more toward Muellerian rather than Batesian mimicry.

In the 1950's biologists took young nestling birds. These birds would gladly eat Viceroys when offered. However, when given a Monarch, they quit eating Viceroys as well. This strongly argued for Batesian mimicry.

But in science no answer is immune from reinvestigation as new data arrives. As mentioned before Viceroys lay their eggs on willow trees. Willow trees are members of the Salicaceae family, so named because they produce salicylic acid. Aspirin is a salicylic acid. If you have ever munched down on an aspirin then you know how bitter it tastes. Chemical analysis revealed that there was a lot of salicylic acid in the body of Viceroy butterflies. If so, then why aren't they unpalatable as well?

In 1991, biologists decided to reinvestigate the question of Viceroy palatability. This time it showed that birds rejected Monarchs and Viceroys equally. Indeed Viceroys were judged to be more unpalatable than Queens.

Thus, we have conflicting data. My guess is that the experiments performed in the 1950s used Viceroys that had not absorbed very much salicylic acid as larva. I suspect that some years weather conditions and the presence or absence of local insect pests combine to make the production of salicylic acid in willows (and cardiac glycosides in milkweed for that matter) better or worse than normal. Butterflies produced during those years will be more or less toxic than normal. If you have a less toxic Viceroy (or Monarch) then birds might be more than happy to eat it. And I suspect the scientists in each case got the results they expected so in their minds there was no need to check them again.

October 20, 2013 - Getting the Kinks Worked Out

I have been busy at work and I have been busy doing things for the blog on my spare time. It looks like for the foreseeable future -- ie until retirement -- I will be able to post only once a week at most. I'm still trying to collect some data daily, however. These weekly posts will be updates on what I've been doing.

Here are my thoughts so far. My goal is to document biodiversity in a suburban setting. When one thinks about nature suburbia doesn't normally come to mind ... rightly so. We humans have altered the environment to make it suitable for us to live here in a very high density. That means most wildlife has to go. For instance, when we first moved into our subdivision there were signs for deer crossings. They've been taken down because the human population in the area has boomed. There are no more deer nearby. Opossums (Didelphis virginiana) regularly came into our yard. It drove our dog mad. Not anymore. More humans means less opossums.

But that doesn't mean that all wildlife has gone. In fact, there is quite a bit of it left. You just have to know where to look for it. If I am going to make my retirement years useful with this blog I need to document things that aren't well documented elsewhere. After thinking long and hard about it my conclusion was ... insects!

My wife and I both like plants. We have planted to attract hummingbirds and butterflies, but the plants attract other insects as well. I don't know of anyone (although there certainly has to be -- feel free to enlighten me) documenting diversity in a suburban environment. So it is here I think I can make the biggest contribution.

There are two big disadvantages to this idea however. First, I'm not that good with insects. I do well identifying mammals. I do respectable identifying birds. I'm OK with reptiles and amphibians; plants fair. Insects ... I suck.

The second problem, insects are small. Most of them are really small, an 1/8 th of an inch or so. I own a Nikon D60 camera and have a 65 mm and a 105 mm macro lens which allows me to take some pretty good photos:

This is a picture of a Milkweed Assassin Bug (Zelus longipes) eating some unidentifiable insect. It does a good job but I need better if I want to be able to identify things like that unidentifiable insect the assassin bug is eating.

Fortunately, I have an old dissecting microscope and I have bought a digital camera attachment from which I can take pictures. One problem with it is that it takes pictures in .BMP format and blogger lets me only post JPEG, GIF, or PNG files. At this very moment my computer whiz of a son is trying to show me how to convert the file.

Here goes an attempt to show my pictures now:

It seems to have worked. This is a picture of a beetle I pinned about 15 years ago. I have no idea what type of beetle it is (feel free to enlighten me ... please!!). The white thing that it is glued to is a chad cut out from an index card. So it is the thickness of an index card. That will give you an idea of the size of the beetle. I would be able to tell you better except that I misread the specs on the camera I brought. The specs said that it comes with calibration software that can be used with a micrometer slide such that the camera can make the needed measurements on its own. When I read it I thought the micrometer slide was included, but it isn't. I had to order the slide separately and it should be in tomorrow.

But in any case, I think that I have most of the equipment I need to document the insect diversity in the neighborhood, and have until my retirement to learn to identify them. I will probably be posting pictures that I take over the next few weeks. If an entomologist happens to read the blog and would like to leave comments on the identification, I would be grateful.

Thanks, and so the blog begins.