Duran, E. (6/2019) Why bats and wasps matter: Debunking myths about pollinators. Essentials, p. 18
Wired to Nature is the Nature Discovery Center’s regular column in Essentials, a monthly magazine published by InstantNewsNetwork that covers the Bellaire and West University communities. Essentials may be read online at https://current.essentialsmagazines.com/
Wildlife Wednesday: The Glory of Mistflower
Purple Mistflower (Conoclinium coelestinum) aka Blue Mistflower is a common late summer and autumn blooming wildflower, found over much of the state of Texas. This bushy showy wildflower is extremely popular with pollinators and other insects, because of the copious amounts of nectar it produces on its bounteous small flowers. Recently, our naturalists have been watching a wide variety cool and interesting insects visiting the plant, which has been blooming in the Pocket Prairie and wildflower gardens around the Nature Center. Here’s a little review of some of the creatures we’ve found out on our Mistflower.
People don’t usually think of beetles as pollinators, but we’ve recently found Spotted Cucumber Beetles (Diabrotica undecimpunctata) flying between the flowers in the park, feeding on nectar and pollen from a variety of Fall wildflowers, like Mistflower, Sunflowers, and Goldenrod. The tiny leaf beetles are only about .64 cm (.25 inches) long. There are 2 generations per breeding season in the South, and we are currently enjoying the 2nd generation of adults for the year. These adults will most like overwinter in forest and garden leaf litter. The name “cucumber beetle” comes from the larva’s habit of feeding on the roots of cucumber plants, as well as other gourd and melon species.
The tiny flowers of mistflower are very popular with smaller butterflies, like Skippers and Little Yellows (Pyrisitia lisa). This small butterfly is aptly named, reaching a wing span of only 4.4 cm (1.73 inches). We seem to get an influx of them this time of year, because of the eclosion (emergence from the pupal case/chrysalis) of the last brood of the season in this region, and migration of more northerly populations to the South. The caterpillars feed on Partridge Pea, a native legume that grows in prairies and grassy fields.
Wool Carder Bees (Anthidium maculosum) are solitary bees, and are just a bit shorter than honeybees, but thicker-bodied. Unlike honeybees, the males males are larger than the females and territorial, and they survive after mating. The females mate with various different males, and establish a nest to lay eggs and raise young by themselves. They are referred to as “carder bees”, because of their habit of gathering plant hairs and fibers to construct their nests.
Tiny little moths, like this Coffee-loving Pyrausta (Pyrausta tyralis) are also covering. These dainty colorful moths only reach a wingspan of 1.7 cm (.67 inches). Their numbers suddenly jump this time of year, here in Houston, along with many other newly emerging and migrating moths. This species gets its name from the larval host plant, Wild Coffee. They have many other similarly patterned and similarly sized relatives in the same genus.
Well, we hope you enjoyed our mini review of some of the insects that have been visiting our Mistflower, here at the Nature Discovery Center. Also, we hope you will consider this beautiful and robust plant for your own home garden, both as decoration and food for wild pollinators.
If you get a chance, come out to the park on a sunny day, and see for yourself whio is visiting the mistflower!
Thanks for joining us, and see you soon!
Eric Duran
Staff Naturalist
photographs: Eric Duran | NDC; Little Yellow by Charles J. Sharp | Wiki; Wool Carder Bee by Jerry Friedman | Wiki; Pyrausta Moth by Thomas Shahan | Flickr
Wildlife Wednesday: Native Bees of Houston
When most people think about bees, they think about honeybees, a species of bee that was introduced to the U.S. from Europe. Its one of the most numerous bees in the area, and if you have flowers in your garden, you’re likely to see many of them. However, honeybees aren’t the only bees that pollinate flowers around Houston. There are many more species of bees beyond honeybees, and many overlooked species of native bee that visit Houston gardens. Here, we’ll look at a few species of these native bees.
Eastern Carpenter Bees (Xylocopa virginica), pictured above, as the name would suggest, nest by chewing holes into dead wood on branches, logs, and sometimes the wood in human made structures. Here in the park, we’ve noticed them burrowing into picnic tables, the picnic pavilions, and the border pieces on the outside of the house. Though this may be vexing, they rarely cause serious damage to structures. Unlike, honeybees, they’re not truly eusocial (colonial) bees, but live in loosely knit groups, in which there is a dominant female. Unlike “queen bees” though, the dominant females are not the only reproducing females in their group. Some carpenter bees, like the Southern Carpenter Bee (Xylopcopa micans), pictured left, are considered “solitary bees”, living in only in mating pairs.
While carpenter bees are large round bees, they are not bumble bees, which are in a different family. You can tell the difference by looking at the abdomen, which is bare on carpenter bees (look left) and furry on bumble bees (look down and to the right).
American Bumblebees (Bombus pennsylvanicus) are wide ranging fat fuzzy bees that can be seen flying slowly from flower to flower. Like carpenter bees, they are often too large to fit into some flowers to feed on nectar, and will “nectar rob”, chewing into the base of the flower to get at the nectar, without coming into contact with the pollen. Regardless of this occasional behavior, bumblebees are important and numerous pollinators for a wide variety of native flowering plants. The American Bumblebee is colonial, often excavating burrows in the ground and under logs and rocks, but have a more variable and changing social structure than that of honeybees.
The American Bumblebee, like many species of bumblebee, is declining in numbers, due to habitat loss and overuse of pesticides, especially neonicotinoids.
Metallic Green Bees (Agapostemon spp.), with their shiny green exoskeletons, are rather conspicuous when they visit a flower. Some are completely green, while others are green in the front with a yellow striped abdomen. They are in the Sweat Bee family, Halictidae, so named for their habit of occasionally landing on humans and drinking their sweat, which can be a welcome source of salts and other nutrients for bees (some butterflies, flies, and small beetles do this as well). Metallic Green Bees live communally in underground burrows. Each mating pair has its own separate burrow, where they raise their young, but the burrows are all close together, which helps with defense against predators and parasites.
Sweat bees, which are generally small bees, are important pollinators for smaller flowers, which larger bees may ignore.
Thanks for joining us this week, to learn more about some of our native bees. If you don’t find these animals in your own garden, take a trip out to the nature center sometime, and visit our native wildflower gardens or our Pocket Prairie.
See you soon!
Eric Duran
Staff Naturalist
~ Many species of our native bees are in trouble, because of development and overuse of pesticides. You can help by planting native and wildlife friendly flowers, leaving some space for ground nesting bees, and not using neonicotinoid pesticides.
To find out more about how you can help bees, visit: https://xerces.org/bumblebees and https://www.fws.gov/pollinators/pollinatorpages/yourhelp.html
photographs: Eastern Carpenter Bee by Daniel Schwen | Wikipedia; Southern Carpenter Bee by Bob Peterson | Wikipedia; American Bumblebee by Diana Terry Hibbits | EOL; Metallic Green Bee by Jon Sullivan | Wikipedia
Wildlife Wednesday: Recent Butterfly Sightings at the Nature Center
Springtime is a great time to see butterflies at the Nature Discovery Center. You may see one fluttering through the forest, visiting our wildflower gardens around the Henshaw House, or flitting from flower to flower in the Pocket Prairie. In this week’s Wildlife Wednesday, we’ll have a look at few species of butterfly that have appeared over the last few weeks.
Gulf Fritillaries (Agraulis vanillae, above photo) are 
one of our most common butterflies in the park. Not actually related to other fritillaries, these butterflies are actually a kind of longwing or Heliconian butterfly. While the adults will feed on nectar from a variety of flower species, the larvae (caterpillars) will only feed on passionvines (Passiflora spp., Left photo). Passionvine leaves are toxic, and in turn the caterpillars are toxic, as are the adults. The bright orange and black coloration acts as a warning. Gulf Fritillaries have a wingspan of about 3.5 inches.
Another common species of butterfly in this park is the large black Spicebush Swallowtail Butterfly (Papilio troilus), which can often be seen flying in an undulating manner through the forested sections of the park, but is really common all over. These large black butterflies have a 4 inch wingspan, and often fly close to the ground. The larvae feed on plants in the Laurel family, like Sweetbay, Red Bay, Spicebush, and non-native Camphor trees.
A butterfly that is not so common in the park, but that recently made an appearance is the gorgeous little Long-tailed Skipper (Urbanus proteus). We saw one feeding on white clover flowers near the Pocket Prairie a few days ago. These blue and brown butterflies have long projections on the hindwings, which look like 2 tails. They lay their eggs, and the larvae feed on plants in the legume family, like wild peas, wisteria, beans, and various others.
Thanks for joining us for another Wildlife Wednesday! Come out to the park soon, and see if you can spot some of these butterflies in the wild.
See you soon,
Eric Duran
Staff Naturalist
photos: Gulf Fritillary and Passionflower by Eric Duran; Spicebush swallowtail by Greg Hume | Flickr; Long-tailed Skipper by John Flannery | Flickr
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