Strategy

Someone asked me recently how bugs survive the winter. She was familiar with my 'work' from seeing my pictures at the library, but had never read my blog, so she was not aware of my lack of actual knowledge about bugs. But I do know a little bit about the subject, tidbits of information that I have picked up from various things I have read, and since tomorrow morning it might be snowing (Correction: It's snowing right now), now is probably a good time to mention how the bugs in the backyard will spend the winter.

The way this woman phrased her question was something along the lines of, "So how do bugs survive the winter, or do they just die?" Well, some of them just die. The males are kicked out of the beehive, for example, and die of the cold (or lack of food, I suppose). They don't do any actual work in the hive, and their entire purpose is to mate with the queen, but she can produce male offspring without having her eggs fertilized, so it is a waste of resources for the hive to feed them over the winter, so out they go. There are other bugs that will just die, too, because they are adults that have reached the end of their life cycle and have done their part to propagate the species. Their young remain as either eggs or larvae, or even pupae, and they will emerge in the spring, but the adults just die. In some cases this happens even back in the summer, as in the case of luna moths - they emerge from their cocoons in the late spring or early summer and have only about two weeks of life as an adult moth - they don't even eat during that time, they have no mouth or digestive system. They mate, and then they die. Their eggs hatch, the caterpillars grow, they make a cocoon before it gets cold, and then they spend the winter as a pupa, waiting for spring.

So, how does a pupa stay alive when the temperature drops below freezing? Because they are filled with an antifreeze (or cryoprotectant, as I read somewhere), as are some other bugs. And there are others, like springtails and snowfleas (which are not really fleas, but are related to springtails) that dehydrate themselves. Because the reason freezing is fatal is because water expands when it freezes, and will burst cells, destroying tissue. But if the cell has no water, or if the animal has antifreeze in it, then the cells don't burst, so they don't die. They just remain dormant until it is warm enough for them again. But I have read about caterpillars that "freeze solid" over the winter, and then just thaw in the spring and go about their merry way.

I know of only one insect that migrates, and that is the monarch butterfly. Monarch butterflies go through several generations in a year, and the last generation to eclose from their cocoons migrate from as far away as Canada to one forest in Mexico (Oooh, how I would love to go there someday...). I don't know if there are other bugs that migrate.

Then there are some bugs that burrow into someplace safe to spend the winter, though I suppose even some of these must have internal mechanisms that protect them from freezing - hiding under tree bark is not going to insulate you that much. I know that once you get to a certain depth the ground doesn't freeze, and is a constant temperature year round, but I don't know how deep that is, and if anything is burrowing that deep. There are certainly plenty of bugs that try to get into people's houses to escape the cold - ladybugs, wasps, western conifer seed bugs (these are the ones we have had in our house in the winter).

So, that's what I know about how bugs spend the winter. And why there will be bugs again in the spring.

As you may have guessed, I didn't find many bugs in the backyard today.

Backyard Bug of the Day:

 I've posted pictures of these once before, but I have no idea what they are. I assume they are larva of some kind; I don't know if they hatched from those orange fuzzy blobs, or if those are what they feed on. Until recently I never looked closely at what has always looked like orange dust on the bottoms of leaves, and I always assumed it was a kind of fungus, but I suppose it could be insect eggs. Except that on the two occasions I have seen these little larvae among them there have been only a couple of larvae, among a lot of the blobs. With that many blobs I would expect more larvae if they were eggs.

Here's a picture of the leaf, to maybe give a sense of how tiny the blobs and the larvae are.

Daily Dandelion:

The amazing thing about dandelions is that I have seen them well into December some years.

Random Bugs:

 Knowing that I would have trouble finding bugs today, because it was below freezing last night and only in the 40s when I went out, I went right to somewhere I thought I'd have a good chance of finding some - inside the garden hose winder-thingy. I did find a couple of tiny leaf hoppers... and several spiders. But those I'll show you later.

 Same pattern, different color scheme. I haven't seen these colors before; I like them.

 Here's the ladybug pupa demonstrating that it can still move in its pupal state.

 It is anchored to the branch, but can move up and down. I have no idea in what way that ability is useful, however.

 Still here...

 I saw a couple of swarms of these bugs. The were not terribly inclined to land, so it took a great deal of patience to get this picture, and this was as close as I could get.

 Swarms are easier to photograph when the sun is out, because even if you can't focus on them (basically impossible) at least you get the reflections of light making the bugs easier to see.

I'm not sure if this is the same kind of bug or not...

 Cricket crammed in a crack in tree bark. I kind of think I have seen a cricket there before, and I wonder if this same cricket has been there for weeks and I just haven't noticed, or if it's back, or a different cricket altogether.

As you know I don't usually take pictures of dead bugs, but I had to take some of this dead ladybug on the back porch, because it shows how really big ladybug wings are. You'd never guess that when you see them with their wings hidden, and even when you see them flying, the wings don't look very big, and when they land, even if they don't get them completely tucked away immediately, and a bit sticks out, they do fold them up so quickly you never get to see how big they are. I wonder why their wings come out like this when they die - do they see Death coming and make a failed effort to fly away before it gets them? Probably not...

I think the number of spider species I saw today is probably about the same as the number of other bug species. Mostly small again, but not as tiny as yesterday. So, Arachnid Appreciation:
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 I really wish I could get a good look at this spider. It's so beautiful from what little I have seen.

 This looks a lot like the huge spider in the basement stairwell, but not as huge. I suppose it could be a male? They are often smaller. This one was on the back porch. Outside is a good place for this spider...