While fall is in full swing where I’m from in New England, it appears to be just now taking hold in Delaware. It is certainly not the same New England fall I’m used to. For example, there are hardly any apple orchards or sugar maples turning blazing hues of orange and red in Delaware. Instead, I’ve come to love a different fall color palette, the deep burgundy of sapling sweetgum trees in a mosaic of fluffed out groundel-tree shrubs (Baccarhis halimifolia) and the tan of dried grasses in a managed field habitat. Instead of apples the fruit of the season are persimmons, which are admittedly rather unpleasant until they are practically overripe. If you can get over the baby food-like texture and large seeds, the flavor is comparable to an orange popsicle.
As the plants begin to senesce with the cooler weather, I find myself coming across the insects I always enjoy finding with less and less frequency. Some are still moving across the landscape, most notably adult monarch butterflies undoubtedly making their multi-generational migration south to their wintering grounds in Mexico. Others are hungry – bees are still scouring the landscape for the remaining fall asters and occasionally mistake the red blotches on my tie dye shirt for the sort of vibrant flowers long out of season. One very large bumblebee decided I needed a very thorough inspection to make sure I wasn’t hiding any nectar from her and proceeded to crawl all over my shirt for a solid ten minutes as I very gingerly attempted to continue to collect Spartina alterniflora seedheads from the side of a dike.
Noticing the absence of the invertebrate curiosities of summer provoked me to think about the role they play in seed collection and subsequent habitat restoration projects, besides from when they ruin what we thought would be a great collection. From what I’ve noticed, or at least from my personal experience, there hasn’t been an awful lot of consideration and appreciation of the little things we’re protecting when we collect and utilize wild seed. There’s always ‘restoration’ and ‘wildlife use’ in the broad sense of things, but how often do we consider the tiny creatures so undervalued by most of human society in management efforts? In light of this, I want to dedicate this blog post to all of the fascinating insects I’ve come across this summer. Most of these critters were found utilizing species on our collection list, just in case you need another reason to be proud of the work we’re doing and the diversity of species it supports!
This black swallowtail caterpillar (Papilio polyxenes) was found feeding on Daucus carota near some Strophostyles helvola we were collecting. Their coloration doesn’t look like much of a disguise, but they actually blend in surprisingly well against the finely cut leaves of the plants in the Apiaceae that they feed on.
Cicada exuvias (exoskeletons left behind when they turn into adults) can be still be found clinging to the various species of pine trees whose roots they feed on before they emerge. This is probably an annual cicada.
I was beyond excited when I found this guy, an io moth (Automeris io) caterpillar feeding on Sassafras albidum leaves. It’s a sizable caterpillar with painful stinging hairs if you’re careless enough to touch it. The adults are large silk moths famous for the false eyespots on their hindwings they flash to startle predators.
I tend to be fairly decent at identifying insects, but this very colorful caterpillar had me stumped for quite some time. It reminded me a bit of a monarch caterpillar and was the about the size of a small one as well. As it turns out, this beauty (finally IDed to Cucullia alfarata) turns into the most drab little brown moth once it goes through metamorphosis. The larval host plants are camphorweed and as seen here, seaside goldenrod (Solidago sempervirens).
Stunning red-spotted purples (Limenitis arthemis) were abundant at all of our freshwater wetland sites throughout Delaware. They frequently could be seen drinking from mud in a behavior called puddling in which butterflies take up supplementary minerals.
If only I had kind words to say about this caterpillar besides commenting on its fascinating appendages and bright colors. While collecting beach plums, my hand and arm started having this rather unpleasant burning sensation. I wrote it off as just being scratched too many times reaching into the bushes with my famously sensitive skin. It wasn’t until a few minutes later I realized it was in fact a reaction to something when Lucy mentioned that her hand “was on fire.” We looked and looked around the bushes, not finding any likely suspects until we stumbled across this crazy looking caterpillar. One look at it between its bright warning colors and visible stinging hairs, it was evident what we’d been stung by! Apparently the stinging rose caterpillar (Parasa indetermina) is a common culprit of caterpillar stings, feeding on a variety of plants in the Rosaceae.
A familiar garden spider of my childhood, I could have never expected the overwhelming abundance of the yellow argiope (Argiope aurantia) in the salt marshes of Delaware. These buggers are everywhere, and I mean EVERYWHERE. Not only that, but they can be enormous! The one above is slightly less than two inches from leg tip to leg tip, although admittedly much larger than most I’ve come across. Take solace, spider haters, in the fact that these guys are in my experience very skittish, so much so that they can be difficult to photograph!