stay away!

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Red milkweed beetle (Tetraopes tetrophthalmus)

  
And speaking of successful lifeforms, forget the composites, (see bull's eye) beetles are the true champions. Most sources estimate over 300,000 known species. That's a three, followed by five zeros. I've read it might go as high as 400,000 species. That's a four and five aughts.

If you go to South America, spend time in a tropical rainforest, look under a few rotting logs or turn over a leaf or two, you'll probably discover a new species yourself. You can name it after your mother (in my case Helen) or high school biology teacher (in my case Ruth).

One found on plants in the milkweed family is simply called red milkweed beetle. A herbivore, its body is full of the unpalatable toxins in intakes in milkweed sap, which looks like Elmer's glue. The insect’s red and black coloration is a warning to any would-be predators.

“I taste bad and will make you sick. Why don’t you eat a lovely green caterpillar instead?”

It’s an example of aposematism (from “apo” meaning away and “sematic” meaning sign), i.e. it’s a warning sign to stay away! I'll make you puke!

-Photo taken at Ijams Nature Center.

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a Dubuffet?

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High on my "to-do" list was getting a photo of an ermine moth—specifically the Ailanthus webworm—because the boldly patterned, black, white and orange insects remind me of one of my favorite artists, French painter and sculptor Jean Dubuffet. Although I do not remember the color orange as being part of Dubuffet's pallette.

As the names suggests, the moths are generally found on their host plant ailanthus, an introduced tree also known as "Tree of Heaven." The webworm moths are native to the tropics and south Florida but have expanded their range north as the alien trees became widespread.

Nature is in a constant state of flux. Give and take. Yin and Yang.

Although linked to the ailanthus, this week I located several of the short (slightly less than an inch in length) moths on common milkweed at Ijams Nature Center.












Outdoor sculpture
Monument with
Standing Beast
by Jean Dubuffet
located in Chicago.





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got milk?

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Yesterday's beetle was green with white spots, today's red with black spots. Oh, the variety.

The milkweed beetle eats milkweed leaves, thus filling itself with toxic milky sap. The red color warns predator birds that it is unpalatable, so it has no need to hide itself away.



- Photos taken at Ijams Nature Center

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looking back 8

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Ten favorite photos from 2009 in chronological order, number 8:

Another red and black insect. The milkweed in front of the nature center was active for months, mostly with milkweed bugs. They produced several generations.

Here's a photo from early August.


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orange again

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Continuing the milkweed thread I started two days ago, I have something of a conspicuous ardor for orange flowers, in part, because there are so few of them. Nature seems to prefer red, yellow and blue.

I'll often stop the car to investigate one growing by the roadside, particularly if I have my camera. A second member of the milkweed family is now in bloom east of the nature center along Island Home Avenue and other roads.


-Photo taken along Magazine Road in South Knoxville.

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Boom Boom

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This will really date me but what did Freddy "Boom Boom" Cannon sing in 1965?

"Oh, baby come on, let me take you where the action is."

I do not think that "Boom Boom" has ever been to Ijams Nature Center but his song is apropos, especially on the plaza. There continues to be hordes, i.e. swarms of insects. The colony of common milkweed in front of the Visitor Center is attracting waves of six-legged wildlife: bugs, beetles and bees (bumbles in the genus Bombus and otherwise).

Boom. Boom. Boom.

-Photo taken at Ijams Nature Center.

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bulking up

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So, you have a teenager at home and you know how much they can eat. But, gram for gram, they just don't compare to caterpillars.

There are a lot of vegetarians in the natural world, so many that plants are under an all out assault most of the time. Consequently, many plants have adopted various defense mechanisms to protect themselves.

Common milkweed produces a sticky, milky white sap. The plant's latex contains large quantities of glycosides, which renders the leaves and seed pods toxic. Sheep and other large mammals cannot eat it, but there are several insects that have developed immunity to the milk of milkweed. The most famous of which is the monarch butterfly caterpillar. Like most caterpillars, they are little eating machines. They are incessant.

Some caterpillars eat as much as 27,000 times their body weight to support their lives as flying insects. I was a seven pound baby. That would be like me eating 94.5 tons of food my first few weeks of life, which I do not think I did. But I'd better ask my mother.

- Photo taken at Ijams Nature Center

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bad gravy

If you are a monarch butterfly, you already know this: common milkweed is in bloom. It’s a robust perennial that can grow up to six feet tall, so it’s no shrinking violet, it’s rather “in your face.”

When broken the hairy stems produce a milky, white latex that looks like Elmer’s glue and tastes like my homemade gravy.

Monarch butterflies are foul-tasting, even poisonous. (I have never worked up the courage to eat a monarch butterfly to test this, maybe someday I will.)

Monarch caterpillars eat milkweed leaves because it renders them unpalatable, much like my gravy. Blue jays know this and avoid the bright orange and black lepidopterans like they were bad restaurants on the wrong side of town. The kind of places you used to frequent at 3 a.m. when you were in college because you didn't know any better.

The insect’s toxicity is due to the presence of “cardenolide aglycones” in their bodies, which the caterpillars ingest as they feed on the plants.

Milkweed likes to grow in sandy soils, basking in full sun. The photo was taken in the plaza at Ijams Nature Center.

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