Category Archives: Prairie Insects

Photo of the Week – July 11, 2013

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Every visit to a prairie is different – partially because the prairie is always changing, and partially because I focus on different aspects or species each time.  This week, I was near Griffith Prairie (owned and managed by my friends at Prairie Plains Resource Institute) when the light coming through the diffused clouds was too much to resist.  I popped over to see what was going on in the grassland…

A stink bug on coralberry (aka buckbrush or Symphoricarpus orbiculatus). Griffith Prairie - Nebraska.

A stink bug on coralberry (aka buckbrush or Symphoricarpus orbiculatus). Griffith Prairie – Nebraska.

On this particular day, wildflowers were blooming all over the place, but what kept catching my eye were stink bugs.  I don’t know if they were particularly abundant or if I was just paying attention enough to notice how many there were.  Either way, I seemed to see stink bugs on just about every plant species I looked at.  They weren’t all the same kind of stink bug, but I don’t know enough about them to tell for sure how many species I was seeing.

Here are three more photos from that same day.

A stink bug on wavy-leaf thistle (Cirsium undulatum).

A stink bug on wavy-leaf thistle (Cirsium undulatum).

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... and a stink bug on leadplant (Amorpha canescens)...

… and a stink bug on leadplant (Amorpha canescens)…

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... and one more, on grass this time.

… and one more, on grass this time.

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Photo of the Week – July 3, 2013

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Sometimes danger is waiting just around the corner…

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An ant explores an annual sunflower for extra-floral nectar, seemingly unware of the crab spider lurking on the other side of the petals.  The Nature Conservancy’s Niobrara Valley Preserve – Nebraska.

Last summer, I wrote a post about annual sunflowers, including a short bit about how sunflowers secrete extra-floral nectar to attract ants.  The ants eat the sweet substance and may help repel potential herbivores from the sunflower in return.  As you might expect, however, an abundance of ants can also be a potential source of food for other predators – including crab spiders.  When I was at our Niobrara Valley Preserve last week, I noticed several instances where crab spiders were hanging around on sunflowers.  They probably weren’t waiting specifically for ants, but apparently ants are an acceptable prey item if they happen to be available (see below).

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A crab spider feeds on an ant it caught on an annual sunflower.  This photo was taken a few minutes after the above photo, but it wasn’t the same sunflower, spider, or ant shown in that first photo.

…and that’s life – and death – in the prairie.