Category Archives: Prairie Photography

Photo of the Week – November 16, 2017

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Most of us don’t think about ants very often unless they’re marching across our kitchen counter (or up our leg).  That anonymity isn’t their fault, it’s ours.  Ants play major roles in ecoystems, and their biomass in prairies can rival that of bison, so if we’re not paying them sufficient attention, that’s on us.

Ants on upright prairie coneflower (Ratibida columnifera) – The Nature Conservancy’s Niobrara Valley Preserve, Nebraska

I took the two ant photos in this post at the Niobrara Valley Preserve back in June of this year.  As is usually the case, I spotted the ants only because they happened to be crawling around on some flowers I was looking at.  Ants are often spotted on flowers, especially those that have easily accessible nectar that helps satisfies ants’ attraction to sweets.  While they don’t usually do much good as pollinators, ants might provide some protective services for plants by helping to keep herbivores away.

Ants spend most of their time underground, of course, where it’s easy for us to forget about them.  When they’re not in their tunnels, they still aren’t all that visible unless we’re looking for them.  Regardless, they are major predators in prairies, collaborating with each other to take down prey much larger than they are.  In addition, ants are scavengers, major forces in nutrient cycling, and important seed dispersal agents for some plant species.  Ants can also steal food and workers from each others’ colonies, “herd” aphids and harvest their honeydew and meat, and are themselves an important food source for other animals.  We should probably stop ignoring them.

Golden early morning light shown on this ant as it crawled down the stem of an upright prairie coneflower plant.

Most prairies probably have around 30 species of ants living in them, which is more local diversity than is found in grassland nesting birds, which we pay infinitely more attention to.  In addition, if we lost all our grassland birds tomorrow, it would be sad, but I’m pretty sure it would have much less impact on prairie ecosystems than if we lost our ants.

Let’s try to keep them both around, shall we?

 

Here are some previous posts I’ve written about ants if you feel like reading a little more about them:

The Density of Ants in Prairies

Ants in the Sun

Killer Thistles

Little Blue Butterflies

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The “tails” on the backside of the wings set the eastern tailed-blue apart from other relatives in our area

Though it’s one of the more common butterflies in this part of Nebraska, the eastern tailed-blue doesn’t get much attention.  One reason is that it is pretty small.  With a wingspan of about an inch, it isn’t much bigger than the white clover flowers it’s often feeding on in our yard.  Its name comes from the protrusions on its wings that set it apart from other blues (butterflies in the subfamily Polyommatinae).  The name “blue” comes from the striking color on the dorsal side of the wings of males.

An eastern tailed-blue displaying its incredible blue color while sitting on my finger.  I found this male in my yard and it was either too weak, tired, or sick, to fly away when I picked it up.  It provided an unusual look at the dorsal side of the wings of this species.

Blues rarely show the dorsal (top) side of their wings except in flight.  The rest of the time, all we get to see are the pale undersides of the wings, highlighted by dark spots and splashes of orange – the size and arrangement of which help distinguish species from each other.  There are several species of little blue butterflies found around here, including the Melissa blue and Reakirt’s blue, but 95% of what I see in the Platte River Prairies and in my yard are eastern tailed-blues.

The Melissa blue has much more orange on the ventral side of its wings than the eastern tailed-blue.  The endangered Karner blue, found only in a few isolated places in the eastern U.S. is a subspecies of the more widespread Melissa blue.

The eastern tailed-blue is far from the only tiny butterfly hiding in plain sight in prairies and yards across the country, but it’s an easy one to find if you start looking.  It’s also one you can feel confident identifying in front of friends and colleagues – assuming you can get close enough to see its little tails…

…the tails can sometimes be hard to see when the wings are completely closed…