Grasshoppers and their relatives

I love the smell of fresh grass. A whole field of it. This time of year the grass is growing like crazy, evidenced by how many times we are mowing the lawn with our little push reel mower. And obviously, grasshoppers also love grass.

They are hemimetabolous, so a baby grasshopper looks like a miniature adult, only without wings. That's why the little ones can only hop away. If it flies from you, it's all grown up. Grasshoppers come in various sizes and shapes and are classified in the order Orthoptera, along with crickets and katydids.

'Short-horned' grasshoppers, belong to the family Acrididae. When many grasshoppers get together they are known as locusts.

These pictures are of the aptly named "Rainbow Grasshopper" Dactylotum bicolor. I found this one in Arizona during "The Bee Course" an excellent instructional course I took, which I'll have to detail in another post. 

You can see the wing "buds". It probably only has one more molt to complete before it is an adult.

Grasshoppers have shorter antennae than the crickets and katydids

With full wings, this grasshopper can fly and is an adult.

Another large grasshopper nymph from Arizona.

This nymph blends in perfectly with the pink sand at Coral Pink Sand Dunes State Park, Utah.

The next two photos are of katydids. Katydids have long antennae like crickets and belong to the family Tettigoniidae. Also like crickets- they make sound by rubbing their wings together, while grasshoppers use their legs

This katydid is an adult female. You can see her curved blade-like ovipositor she uses to lay egss in tree branches.

A cricket nymph. Crickets belong to the family Gryllidae and usually have rounded heads and long antennae.

This black field cricket is eating a piece of dog food.

This is a Jerusalem cricket, which is despite the common name is not a true cricket. It belongs to the family Stenopelmatidae, large flightless insects. They are found in the western United States and Mexico and have many interesting common names such as the Navajo and Spanish names meaning 'skull insect' and 'earth child'.

They are nocturnal and live in burrows.

Follow up: Aphid Mummy

In my Mother's Day gardening post I talked about a photo of an aphid mummy that I found in the garden. I just happened to check the mummy today and well... it's alive! I am super-nerd excited about the video and photographs I got of the emergence of the tiny parasitoid wasp. Hopefully you enjoy them (almost) as much as I do!

The wasp has already chewed a circlular hole in the back of the mummy.

The head starts to pop out!

Shiny and green

Like I mentioned in this post about cuckoo wasps, I really enjoy green and shiny insects. This morning I was able to get a few shots of some that I see around often.

I've mentioned this tiger beetle before, but today I caught it in a sleepy disposition and got more pictures. This is a common species Cicindela sexguttata that is often seen hunting along dirt paths or in gardens.

These flies are often spotted perching on leaves in gardens. They are in the genus Condylostylus.

This jumping spider Phidippus audaxdoes has green iridescent chelicerae.

Lichens, moss, and fungi

A tiny soggy world.

These are some photos I took back in March, during a much colder time. I wanted to share before I forgot about them.

Garden Helpers

Today I got to enjoy two of my favorite outdoor activities- gardening and photography! I found some exciting little beasts and just finished learning a bit more about their stories. As any gardener knows, there are many insects and other invertebrates to be found in the garden. Some, you are usually not happy to see, while others are welcome encounters!

Here is a garden spider, found above my herb garden. Spiders feed on many "pest" insects, so I was happy to see this one. There was even a tiny yellow/orange smiley face on her abdomen!

My pea plants were covered in aphids. I brushed a bunch of them off the leaves, and watched ants collect them and carry them off.

Ants are widely known to "farm" aphids for the honeydew they secrete. They collect, protect, and even introduce aphids to plants to graze, guarding their herd. But when these aphids fell, I guess the ants decided it was butchering time! They didn't seem to be very gently tending the aphids they carried off.

Aphids have many enemies however.

This odd-looking aphid is actually called an "aphid mummy" A tiny parisitoid wasp laid her eggs in the aphid, and now the dead aphid has a baby wasp growing inside its body. The tiny wasp will emerge from a hole it makes in the mummy. The wasps are rarely seen but the bloated mummies can be found as evidence of their actions.

This is known as an "aphid wasp" subfamily Pemphredoninae. I saw this one tackle an aphid and carry it off. She paralyzes it and leaves it as food for her young.

I also saw this tiny blue wasp flying around the aphids. I wondered if she too was hunting them, though she didn't appear to be taking any. I then learned - after getting a closer look at the photos - that this is a tiny cuckoo wasp (family Chrysididae). 

Like cuckoo bees, cuckoo wasps parasitize other wasp nests, laying their egg in an established host nest so their young can feed on the work of other wasps. These cuckoos are known to be nest parasites to the aphid wasp I had seen collecting aphids nearby.

But these cuckoo wasps, perhaps genus Pseudomalus, also like to feed on aphid honeydew, just like ants.

The little blue cuckoo wasp, also known as "jewel wasp" was flitting around the aphids, collecting honeydew. So as a parasite of an aphid parasite, and connoisseur of aphid honeydew, I guess these wasps aren't technically helping my aphid problem. But they are beautiful!

Here is another different kind of aphid, with wings. Aphids go through several stages as colonies, involving sexual winged adults and asexual stages where young aphids can be churned out - basically cloning themselves.

Here is another popular aphid enemy, which has been feeding on a scale insect.

As I was checking plants in the garden, this very dusty-looking toad jumped out of my way.

This cabbage white caterpillar was feeding on my broccoli. I've been picking them off and throwing them out of the garden. But this time I dropped it in the vicinity of the toad I had just seen.

When I looked back, I saw the toad had snapped up the prize.

And what would any garden be without pollinators? The bees are still enjoying the buttercups on the lawn, and so am I.

Happy Mother's Day!