Aster World, Part 1: Monarchs and Owlets

Symphyotrichum pilosum--Hairy Aster--is a native wildflower that volunteers profusely in the Creek Field, the Road Field, and our backyard.  It is an amazing pollinator plant!  This year I tried to document some of the creatures that came to the asters.   I am sure there were many more!  (Many thanks to bugguide.net and the Kansas Arthropods Facebook group for help with identification!)

These migrating Monarchs--newly metamorphosed, they're so bright and clean--came to feed on the nectar in the flowers:

Among the moth visitors, my favorites were these owlet moths, so named because their faces resemble owls.  This one is Rachiplusia ou.  Supposedly, "ou" comes from that splash of white paint on the upperside forewings--which to some observers spells "o-u."  :-) 

These little guys hover while feeding making it a treat

when they stop long enough to show their markings.

There's that adorable owl face:

Another member of the Owlet Family feeding on the asters was this handsomely-robed guy, Spodoptera frugiperda.  Here he is in action:

The females have more subtle markings, making their wings appear to be a plain gray.  The larvae of this species are called "armyworms."  Their voracious appetite gives the species its name, "frugiperda," meaning "fruit" that is "lost."  However, grasses are their preferred food.  S. frugiperda lives year-round in the south and migrates into Kansas toward the end of the summer.  

Other citizens of Aster World--true bugs, Tree Cricket and Meadow Katydid, flower flies, iridescent flies, spiders, bees, wasps, beetles, other butterflies and moths--appear in the following posts.

Aster World, Part 2: True Bugs

 True Bugs were also part of Aster World.   

It was a surprise to find these red and black bugs--Small Milkweed Bugs--on the asters in our backyard, because they normally feed on milkweeds, as their name implies.    But researchers have recently documented these guys feeding on flowers in the Aster Family--as they are doing here:

Small Milkweed Bugs (Lygaeus kalmii) feeding on Hairy Asters

(Symphyotrichum pilosum) October 17-19, 2021

The Helmeted Squash Bug (Euthochtha galeator) also showed up.  (S)he is one of the "leaf-footed bugs"--so named for the leaf-like enlargement of the hind femur.

I love that particular feature!   Together with the tasteful mottling and the understated two-toned antennae, that femur-flare makes this one classy bug.  

Aster World, Part 3: Spiders

Garden spiders love asters.   Nectar and pollen bring dinner right to their door.  Here a Banded Argiope enjoys a well-wrapped snack.

 Last year the Black-and-Yellow Garden Spider (Argiope aurantia) 

was common on the asters.  This year it's the Banded Argiope 

(Argiope trifasciata) that set up shop on the Hairy Asters.  

What makes some spiders "cute?"  Jumping spiders are famously "cute."   Here, in the asters, is one with an irresistibly adorable face, and a second one that just missed a moth-meal.  The Two-Spotted Herpetogramma moth was almost fatally slow but the spider was even slower.

The Banded Argiope and the jumping spiders were active during the say.  But as night fell another spider was setting up shop.  This tiny night spider stretched her web next to the asters, between two stalks of Indian Grass.   The outlines of the Flint Hills are visible in the background.  

 This spider, barely visible against the night sky,

 was going to work just as the Banded Argiope 

and the jumping spiders were calling it a day.

October 3, 2021.

Aster World, Part 4: Who Killed the Butterfly?

 

Someone had preyed on this Clouded Sulphur, but who? 

Usually when butterflies are immobilized and hanging upside down on a flower, a close examination reveals a spider's legs or one or two of the strange body parts of the predatory Jagged Ambush Bug.   But in this case I couldn't find any trace of the real predator.  The other creatures that appear here--the flies and the owlet moth--are after nectar, not butterfly innards. The only remaining suspect is the owner of that club-shaped, multi-partite antenna at the end.

Aster World, Part 5: Tree Cricket and Katydid

Katydids and crickets belong to a special order of insects--the Orthoptera.   Their hind legs are modified for jumping, with especially large femurs.   

A Common Tree Cricket came to munch on the asters on October 18, 2021:

A female of the genus Oecanthus (Common Tree Cricket)

munching on Hairy Asters, October 18, 2021.  This genus

has only modestly enlarged hind femurs.  

She is sharing the asters with a Cucumber Beetle and with Secondary Screwworm Flies as well as some tiny unidentified flies.

This katydid has a large head, making her look a little like her fellow Orthopterans, the grasshoppers.   However, check out those long antennae.  They say, uh-uh, not a grasshopper!

Here a female Greater Meadow Katydid

(Orchelimum sp.) moves slowly through

the Hairy Asters.  

What is she doing on the asters?  She may be looking for petals, seeds, or pollen to eat.  She is not looking for a place to lay eggs.   Greater Meadow Katydids oviposit in the stems of grasses.