The Creek Journal

Admirals, Leeches, and a Jesus Bug

Here below we have a Red Admiral (Vanessa atalanta) mud-puddling in the moist sands adjacent to the Creek (just upstream from the Pool). Most likely this is a male since females rarely extract minerals in the same way.

We read this from Wikipedia: "Males seem to benefit from the sodium uptake through mud-puddling behaviour with an increase in reproductive success. The collected sodium and amino acids are often transferred to the female with the spermatophore during mating as a nuptial gift. This nutrition also enhances the survival rate of the eggs."

And then more leeches. I cannot even begin to identify these sweet things, but I'm trying.
This video was taken near the confluence of the two small streams that form the main part of the creek.

Below is a short clip that may have caught a water strider catching another insect on the surface.

Family: Gerridae

Water striders, water bugs, magic bugs, pond skaters,

skaters,skimmers, water scooters, water skaters, water skeeters,

water skimmers, water skippers, water spiders, or Jesus bugs.

This also from Wikipedia:

"Water striders are able to walk on top of water due to a combination of several factors. Water striders use the high surface tension of water and long, hydrophobic legs to help them stay above water. Water molecules are polar and this causes them to attract to each other. The attractive nature results in the formation of a film-like layer at the top of water. This top layer has gravity acting downward in addition to the water molecules below pulling down the upper molecules. This combination creates a touch surface tension.

Gerridae species use this surface tension to their advantage through their highly adapted legs and distributed weight. The legs of a water strider are long and slender, providing the weight of the water strider body to be distributed over a much larger surface area. The legs are strong, but have flexibility that allows the water striders to keep their weight evenly distributed and flow with the water movement. Hydrofuge hairs line the body surface of the water strider. There are several thousand hairs per square millimeter, providing the water strider with a hydrofuge body that prevents wetting from waves, rain, or spray, which could inhibit their ability to keep their entire body above the water surface if the water stuck and weighed down the body. This position of keeping the majority of the body above the water surface is called an epipleustonic position, which is a defining characteristic of water striders. If the body of the water strider were to accidentally become submerged, for instance by a large wave, the tiny hairs would trap air. Tiny air bubbles throughout the body act as buoyancy to bring the water strider to the surface again, while also providing air bubbles to breathe from underwater.

The tiny hairs on the legs provide both a hydrophobic surface as well as a larger surface area to spread their weight over the water. The middle legs used for rowing have particularly well developed fringe hairs on the tibia and tarsus to help increase movement through the ability to thrust. The hind pair of legs are used for steering When the rowing stroke begins, the middle tarsi of Gerrids are quickly pressed down and backwards to create a circular surface wave in which the crest can be used to propel a forward thrust. The semicircular wave created is essential to the ability of the water strider to move rapidly since it acts as a counteracting force to push against. As a result, water striders often move at 1 meter per second or faster."

What We See When We Are Looking

The first five images were sent by Kate:

Kate's caption:
"cheesy-extra-blurry-women's-retreat-brochure-cover-esque photo"

And now the butterfly, moth, and fly photos (thank you Harlin).

"Somewhat past the end of summer I couldn’t find any trace of a wafer ash (also known as a hop tree or a Ptelea trifoliata). Last visit I noticed that some of them did survive and this visit I found that many butterflies had found the flowers. So, I just stood by the tree tanning (or sun burning) the back of my neck and hoping for a clear view. Here are five photos of three of them. --H."

QuestionMark (Polygonia interrogationis)

Snout Butterfly (Libytheana bachmanii)

Variegated Fritillary (Euptoieta claudia)

"There were more than butterflies at the wafer ash flowers including many flies and a few beetles. For most of them I haven’t attempted to find a name, but I did find some sort of name for a moth and a personally never-before-seen fly. The moth book says the moth is probably an eight-spotted forester which were very common. I was able to match the wing veins of the fly to a family name for which the description matches. --H."

Eight-Spotted Forester (Alypia octomaculata)

Fungus Gnat (Mycetophilidae)

Butcher Paper

Walkingstick (Insect Order: Phasmida)

Missing that second left leg.

This one at rest on a paint roller in the creek house.

Texas Giant Centipede or Giant Redheaded Centipede (Scolopendra heros)

Both photos above feature the same friend. After we found him inside the house, we gently transplanted him outside where we hurried a photo as he himself hurried off into the grass.

Some more background to enhance viewer appreciation:

"This species of centipede has powerful jaws — modified front legs, termed maxillipeds — and its venom is known to produce significant pain and swelling that, when combined with infectious organisms acquired in its travels and feeding (this centipede is known to feed on putrefying flesh and fecal matter, and thus is subject to microbial contamination), can produce serious complications. Their bites should, therefore, be considered at least nominally dangerous. It has a cluster of simple eyes (ocelli) on either side of the anterior head. These primitive eye clusters apparently provide no assistance in hunting, as the animal hunts nocturnally and , and are not necessary for the animal to respond to light. When the eyes are covered with opaque paint, no difference is noted in its immediate negative response to bright light stimulus.

Scolopendra heros has six cephalic segments, which are closely fused in the adult, but observable under magnification in the embryo. A segmented antennae is attached to the anterior portion of the second cephalic segment. This structure is the animal’s primary sensory organ, and is extensively used when hunting for food.

It has 21-23 body segments, consisting of sclerotized tergal plates dorsally, and sternal plates verntrally, which are connected laterally by softer pleural membranes from which erupt the coxal segments of each leg, and on which are found (on some segments, but not on all) open spiracles for respiration. A single pair of legs, each with seven segments (coxa, trochanter, femur, tibia, and 3 tarsi) is attached to each body segment, save the first and last segments. Legs attached to the first body segment are modified into a pair of four-segmented poisonous jaws. The last body segment comprises the anus of the male, and in the female is further modified into a gonopod with a pair of diminutive, articulating ovipositors. The posterior pair of legs is the longest and most robust, and is modified for grasping." http://bugsinthenews.info/?p=1145

The following two passages both involve a Dr. Baerg. Seems as though the good physician was a curious one at least.

"Scolopendra heros is purported to make tiny incisions with its legs while walking across human skin. When the animal is irritated, a poison is supposedly produced near the base of each leg and dropped into the wounds causing inflammation and irritation. According to one story cited by Dr. Baerg, an officer in the Confederate Army, while sleeping in his tent, was suddenly aroused by the creepy feeling of a large centipede crawling on his chest. A number of spots of deep red, forming a broad streak, indicated the arthropod’s passage across the man’s chest and abdomen. Violent pain and convulsions soon set in, accompanied by excessive swelling in the bitten area. The victim fought with death for two days and then succumbed. The agony suffered by the bitten officer was described by an eyewitness as the most frightful he had ever observed."

http://www.uark.edu/ua/arthmuse/sheros.html

"The prey is captured and killed or stunned with the poison claws. Poison glands are located in the basal segments of the claws or fangs, sometimes called maxillipeds. Each gland drains its toxic contents through a small opening near the tip of the fang. In the mid 1920s, Dr. Baerg tested the effect of the venom by inducing a centipede to bite one of his little fingers, leaving the fangs inserted for about four seconds. The bite was followed by a sharp and strictly local pain, which began to subside noticeably after about 15 minutes. In about two hours the pain was only very slight, but there was a general swelling in the finger. Three hours after the bite, most symptoms had disappeared."

http://www.dallaszooed.com/animalfacts/animalfacts.php?id=95&ci=2&li=8&name=TUV

Just barely enough white petal in focus to justify including this one
(White Prickly Poppy, Argemone albiflora)

Blue Curls (Phacelia congesta)

Here's an interesting site to explore: http://www.usanpn.org/

So phenology is the study of when we see the first walking sticks, centipedes, prickly poppies, or blue curls. It's the calendar we read when we see nature breaking out into sticky buds or laying speckled eggs.
About fifteen years ago I kept a long piece of white butcher paper taped to a hallway door in our home. Each time I witnessed a flower blooming for the first time during the year, I'd write its name and the date on the butcher paper. As the seasons progressed, I tried to also mark the last time I saw that species blooming on our piece of prairie. I found that yellowed scroll last week while packing up boxes to move out to the Creek.
Of course, phenology is an immensely important tool in our construction of aA theory of global warming because if we can document in specifics the arrival of spring or summer a week or two earlier, then we have something else to go on. And if we can detect subtle changes in the relationships between animals and plants, for instance, and see how climate change might be disrupting their symbiotic relationship, then we have something wise to go on. And maybe disheartening. Who can tell?

And I heard this piece on the radio yesterday evening:

Looking for Consequences of Shifting SeasonsBY CLARK BOYD ⋅ APRIL 6, 2012

In a small park at Wageningen University, biologist Arnold van Vliet points out the signs of spring that are all around—a prunus tree, with nice white flowers, a hazel bush unfolding its leaves. It’s a lovely sight on a beautiful spring day.

The only problem is that these flowers and leaves really shouldn’t be here yet.

“Everything is now two to three weeks ahead of schedule,” van Vliet says. “Butterflies are appearing very early—extremely early because of the very warm March we had.”

But a warm March here isn’t that much of an anomaly these days. Van Vliet says spring is regularly coming weeks earlier than it used to in the Netherlands. In fact, he says, with temperatures on the rise the whole climate of the country has shifted in the past 10 years to become more like southern France.

Van Vliet has been following this climatic shift for more than a decade as head of an effort here called “Nature’s Calendar.” The program enlists the help of more than 8,000 scientists and ordinary Dutch citizens to track changes in the seasons through what’s known as phenology. That’s an old-fashioned word for the study of the timing of seasonal, life-cycle events, such as the first flowering of a particular plant, or when a species of bird first lays its eggs in spring.

People who work close to nature have been tracking this kind of data for centuries. But environmental scientists in the Netherlands and elsewhere are more concerned about it than ever, because the shifting of the seasons is having real environmental effects.

“We see that the length of our growing season is already one month longer than before 1988, when the temperature started to change,” van Vliet says. “We see already an enormous change in species diversity in the Netherlands—very many southern species that live in Belgium, France and even farther south, that (now) appear in the Netherlands. And the more cold-loving species are significantly decreasing. So we see that signal.”

And the Dutch aren’t alone. As the planet warms up, scientists are seeing a similar trend around the world. Jake Weltzin, an ecologist with the US Geological Survey in Tucson, Arizona, and coordinator of the USA National Phenology Network, says spring has been coming earlier in much of the United States.

Weltzin says maple sap started running earlier than normal this year, and species as different as butterflies and horseshoe crabs turned up earlier as well.

Many plants and animals can adapt to earlier springs, Weltzin says, but he adds that what’s really important is how these shifts in timing can affect an entire landscape.

“We’re starting to get a handle on that as a complex system,” he says. Among other things, he says there’s more potential for what he calls “mismatches” in an ecosystem.

“If you have a plant, and an animal, and the animal depends on that plant for nectar, or forage or food, and if the plants are coming early, and the animals aren’t arriving at the same time, you can end up with this mismatch. So there may not be enough pollination, there may not be enough food. There may not be enough milkweed for the Monarch butterflies.”

In some cases, these mismatches that are coming with the shifting seasons could even affect food crops for people.

Weltzin says what’s needed to better understand these trends and changing relationships is greater cooperation and data sharing among national phenology networks.

Like the Netherlands, many European countries have such networks, and in fact there is now a European database of historical phenological data.

Kjell Bolmgren, who directs Sweden’s National Phenology Network, says the data suggest that spring is coming a week earlier there than it used to. But he notes that isn’t necessarily bad news for all of Sweden’s plants and animals.

“My prediction would be that most organisms in Sweden will benefit from the improved growing conditions,” Bolmgren says, “simply because the difficult part in Sweden is the winter. So once that gets shorter, it’s going to be easier for most plants.”

Bolmgren says it also means a longer growing season in Sweden, but he cautions that the Swedish summer might get so long that drought becomes a problem.

There’s also no guarantee that important parts of the country’s ecosystems won’t get out of whack.

Arnold Van Vliet at Wageningen University says he’s already seeing winners and losers in the Netherlands.

Plants and insects seem to be adapting fairly quickly to the earlier Dutch springs, he says, but migratory birds do not seem to be getting the clue to come back sooner. And he says that could mean trouble for some ecological relationships.

Still—what’s the big worry about all this?

“Yeah, why worry, that’s one of main questions asked,” van Vliet says. “You have to look at the bigger picture. And if you look on a global scale, 40 to 50 percent of all the plant and animal species are located on two percent of the earth’s surface. And if 50 percent of all the plant and animal species are in danger because they are in a climate zone they’re not used to, then I think we have a major issue there. Many species will be lost.”

Van Vliet says the trick to driving home the importance of phenological data, and what it’s telling us about the impacts of climate change, is to enlist the help of the public. To the end he has set up websites where citizens can help scientists track the tiniest changes in nature—things like the time and place of new hay fever symptoms or tick bites, or even the number of bugs smashed on a license plate after a summer drive.

They could all contain clues about how local environments are changing as the world warms up and the seasons continue to shift.

http://www.theworld.org/2012/04/phenology-shifting-seasons/

the origin of life . . .

April 4: Random Springtime Images from a Hillside, Field, and Stream

Real artists never apologize for their work. And they certainly don't do so prior to a showing. But since the one who compiles all these images and comments for a streamside makes no personal claims, he feels entitled to apologize for the quickshot nature of the following images snapped in haste and quickly pasted to the cloud. So there.

What we see here is an overgrown garden where last year there was barely enough short grass to wither and die in a drought and heatwave. But this year we've already had more rain than the total for last year, so plants grow to waist-high, climbing over, winding around, and nearly hiding the few intentional plants we set out one year ago. The first picture of the little orchard would look different today: I spent the past two days mowing it down and then installing several hundred feet of black irrigation pipe. Now we merely set the timer up at the well and watch water drip out at a rate of one gallon per hour, slowly moistening the sandy soil around blackberries, peaches, apples, pears, plums, and figs. Had we built the irrigation system last year, perhaps we would not have lost three quarters of the blackberry plants. Those few that did survive the record dry heat are now producing green fruits.

Last year we saw hardly any patches of widow's tears, but this spring they crowd every shady spot there is. The trail leading up Whitman's Rough to Priest's Cave is an overgrown mini-jungle of these sweet blue flowers and their thick-leaved grass-like parts. Occasionally a white flower among them can be found.

The prophet in me wants to warn of great swarms of grasshoppers for this summer. The situation is ripe.

Albino day flower?

White dandelion, or Rock lettuce (Pinaropappus roseus)

Indian blanket (Gaillardia pulchella)

Spittle from the spittlebug (Philaenus spumarius)
Among the stones near the Pond.

Garden insect is jump champion

By Jonathan Amos
BBC News Online

Move over the flea - the best jumper in the animal world is the froghopper.

This unassuming six-millimetre-long bug which leaves "cuckoo spit" on garden foliage can spring 70 centimetres into the air.Although the flea can do something similar, the froghopper is 60 times heavier.
"That makes froghoppers the true champions," said Professor Malcolm Burrows, head of zoology at Cambridge University, UK.
"It's not so much that they jump a little higher than fleas; it's the fact that because they're heavier, their jump performance is more impressive," he told BBC News Online.
Professor Burrows reports his investigation of insect jumping in the journal Nature.
Super acceleration
The froghopper ( Philaenus spumarius ) is well distributed across the world. It lives by sucking the juice out of plants. The developing young will hide from predators inside a froth blown out of their back ends earning the insects the nickname spittlebug.

Adults leap from plant to plant. They have long been known to be good jumpers but Professor Burrows has now measured their performance.The froghopper's secret is found in two hind legs that are so specialised to the high jump task that they are simply dragged along the ground when the insect is walking.
When the bug needs to leap, the legs form part of a very powerful catapult system. The limbs are lifted in a cocked position, held by ridges on the legs.
Two huge muscles, one controlling each leg, are contracted, and when they build up sufficient force, the legs break the lock and the insect springs forward.
"The legs snap open and all the force is applied at once," said Professor Burrows. "It accelerates in a millisecond up to a take-off velocity of four metres per second. That's phenomenal."
The scientist calculated the initial acceleration to be 4,000 metres per second per second.
Brain input
The G-force generated was more than 400 gravities in the best jumps monitored. In comparison, a human astronaut going into orbit on a rocket may experience no more than about 5 gravities.
We have always been led to believe that fleas are the jump champions of the animal world but Professor Burrows believes the record books should now be rewritten.
"The legitimate comparison is to look at how much force per body weight each animal can generate," he explained."A froghopper can exert more than 400 times its body weight; a flea can do 135 times its body weight; a grasshopper can do about eight times; and we can do about two to three times our body weight."

Professor Burrows studied the insect's athleticism as part of his research into how animals' nervous systems control body movement.
Insects are used in this type of study because their fewer brains cells are often larger than in more complex organisms, making it easier for scientists to see the processes involved.

Story from BBC NEWS:http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/science/nature/3110719.stm Published: 2003/07/30 17:26:19 GMT © BBC 2012

And here's a commendable video from a gentleman in British Columbia:

Common Carp (Cyprinus carpio) in the Pool

Phlox

Common garden/orchard/favorite tree destroyer

Pipevine Swallowtail larva
(Battus philenor)

April 1--Recounting March's Explosion (Part II)

(Gaura parviflora)

(Gaura brachycarpa) (?)

(Gaura parviflora)

The second question in the Gaura key asks if the anthers are about 1 mm. long. If yes then the Gaura you are looking at is G. parviflora. In the description are the common names “LIZARD-TAIL GAURA” and “VELVET-LEAF GAURA” which reassure me that I ended up in the right place. These plants are growing close to the drive on the right just before the gate close to the house. I had seen them and passed them by on the previous Sunday, didn’t get over to take a better picture on Friday, and so I settled for a quickie photo on the way out to make a record. . . .

Gaura brachycarpa (?)
Unlike the one above, there are many questions in the key to get to G. brachycarpa and many of the questions refer to the mature fruit which aren’t around yet. So, I’m putting a question mark by this one. Also, unnerving is that the Balcones Preserve plant list doesn’t have it. Still, of the characters I do have and looking at photographs and drawings suggest this is my best guess for now. For sure it is different from the preceding plant. So, all the ways in which two closely related things show the inventiveness as well as the conservative nature of nature are displayed for our viewing enjoyment. Of course, the same comment applies to the 3 evening primroses I was looking at yesterday.

The flowers in the one photograph are wilted. This is consistent with the name since the flowers for that plant open in the evening and are on their way out by the morning. This photograph was taken in the early afternoon just before lunch. These plants are found in the field maybe a hundred feet south of your orchard.

Stemless Evening Primrose (Oenothera triloba)

Cutleaf Evening Primrose (Oenothera laciniata)

Kunth’s Evening Primrose (Oenothera kunthiana)

Remember how I thought an earlier evening primrose was of the cut-leaf kind? Well, now I think I found it all over again. Since I was equivocating in the past, I thought it would be good to give an extra bit of diligence this time. (But let me add the usual disclaimer that I think self-correcting is part of the re-calibration of the universe that is one of the interesting off-shoots of nature watching. Those who profess feel embarrassed, while it is just business as usual for those who are amused by the spectacle.)...

Right name are not, I do think it is pretty certain that there are three kinds: one with no stem, one with a good-sized stem, and a white one. Also the seed pods are different, the flowers are different and the leaves are different. Seed pods—I think you can see in the photos that there are angles on the white-flowered one and more rounded corners on the tall one’s seed pods. Below are my guesses.

Oenothera triloba (Stemless Evening Primrose)
One of the evening-primroses growing south of the picnic table has no stem. It has the largest blossoms and they grow from the center of a clump of leaves. I think it is Oenothera triloba. Here are someone else’s pictures:
http://www.sbs.utexas.edu/bio406d/images/pics/ona/oenothera_triloba.htm

O. laciniata (Cutleaf Evening Primrose)
This plant is growing on the way to the dump right after the fence line. The following page has an image comparing leaf shapes of O. laciniata:
http://www.missouriplants.com/Yellowalt/Oenothera_laciniata_page.html
And this page has an image showing the stigma of O. laciniata (the other two Evening Primroses have the stigmas above the stamens when they are releasing pollen according to the key in Shinner’s book).
http://www.ppws.vt.edu/scott/weed_id/oeola.htm

O. kunthiana (Kunth’s Evening Primrose)
Here are some images of O. kunthiana:
http://swbiodiversity.org/seinet/taxa/index.php?taxon=494
The Wildflower Center has photos of something that looks like the pink flowered O. speciosa (showy evening-primrose) to me so I’m not sure they have the correct plant. . . .

. . . Walter was busy weed-eating when I left yesterday. I’ll bet that cling weed, scarlet pimpernel, and bastardcabbage at his place are now all a thing of the past. The word “bastard cabbage” is what the USDA web site calls Rapistrum rugosum. The Balcones Preserve plant list says the common name is “yellow cress”, but I think “bastard cabbage” has a nice ring to it. The bastard cabbage is one of the plants for which I obtained nothing but awful photos last Sunday, and so I was looking for one in order to try again. When I couldn’t find it right away I was supposing you had gone after it with a weed hoe or something since it can be annoying. As you drive from Marble Falls to Austin just now it is an extremely common plant.

No doubt many of the happy Texans driving around this very day are gazing upon fields of it as they comment on the beauty of the wild flowers this year. This is another reason to use the USDA common name for the plant, it would enliven the spring motoring nature excursions. “Honey, put little Johnnie over there in the bastard cabbage so I can get a picture.” Neither Correll and Johnston nor the Shinner’s book list a common name, but the latter says the genus is the Latin word for wild rape. And, actually, I kind of like the plant myself, but a weed it is in the opinion of many.

Another plant considered to be a weed is a new plant to the list—scarlet pimpernel (Anagallis arvensis). I didn’t go through a key, but I think I know it when I see it. I did do a photo id. In this case, my picture would not be much of a field guide photo in a plant book but it works for me as a photo is some other kind of field guide. Maybe it is a field guide to seeing. H.

Bastard cabbage, Yellow cress, Turnip-weed,
Common giant mustard, Ball mustard,
Wild turnip, Wild rape and Tall mustard-weed
(Rapistrum rugosum)

Scarlet pimpernel, Red chickweed, Poorman's barometer,
Poor man's weather-glass,
Shepherd's weather glass or Shepherd's clock
(Anagallis arvensis)

(A few of the common names have been created because the petals of Anagallis arvensis are said to close when bad weather approaches. We're watching.)