Tag Archives: insect

Photo of the Week – May 7, 2015

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As I’ve said many times, the prairie is an ecosystem best seen up close.  You have to look carefully to see much of the beauty.  Dillon (one of our Hubbard Fellows) and I were poking around today and found this yellow wood sorrel flower.  It looked as if an artistic child had been playing with a hole punch.  There were a few scattered holes in nearby blossoms but this was the only one that looked as if it had been purposefully accented.  Any insect smarties out there know what might have made the holes?

Wood sorrel (Oxalis stricta) with insect holes. TNC Platte River Prairies, Nebraska.

Yellow wood sorrel (Oxalis stricta) with insect holes. The Nature Conservancy’s Platte River Prairies, Nebraska.

This is the season of small statured wildflowers.  Puccoon, ragwort, locoweed, wood sorrel and many others are just starting to bloom.  Perhaps the most ostentatiously-colored of our spring flowers, however, is purple poppy mallow.  This one was just getting ready to open today.

Purple poppy mallow (Callirhoe involucrata). TNC Platte River Prairies, Nebraska.

Purple poppy mallow (Callirhoe involucrata). The Nature Conservancy’s Platte River Prairies, Nebraska.

Purple poppy mallow (Callirhoe involucrata). TNC Platte River Prairies, Nebraska.

Another look at the same flower.

We’ve been getting a lot of rain lately, which bodes well for a good wildflower season, at least for the next month or so.  We’ll see what kind of weather the El Nino brings after that.  We might get really wet or really dry.  For now, I’ll enjoy the colors.

DON’T PANIC! It’s just a crane fly.

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“WOW!  That’s a GIGANTIC mosquito!!”

That is a common response to most people’s first sighting of a crane fly, a flying insect with a wingspan of 1-2 cm or more.  Although they do somewhat resemble very large mosquitoes, crane flies are completely harmless to humans.  Crane flies are one of many groups of insects that are widespread and diverse, but almost completely unknown to most of us.

A crane fly on indiangrass at Lincoln Creek Prairie - Aurora, Nebraska.

A crane fly on indiangrass at Lincoln Creek Prairie – Aurora, Nebraska.

There are apparently over 15,000 species and subspecies of crane flies worldwide.  Raise your hand if you’d heard of them before this post…   Exactly.  That’s not a knock on you, but an indication of the great complexity and diversity of the our world.

The photo above is – I think – of a female tiger crane fly (Nephrotoma ferruginea).  That identification isn’t based upon any particular knowledge of mine, but upon a search of the fantastic website bugguide.net.    I know diddly poo about crane flies, but according to a short blurb I found at this link , the larvae of this species hang out in the soil and eat decaying plants and roots. Most adult crane flies only live a week or two – just time to find a mate and lay eggs before dying.

Crane flies are common in prairies, but also easy to find in many other habitats, including backyards, so there are plenty of opportunities to mistake them for huge mosquitoes.  If you start keeping your life list of crane fly species now, maybe you can get all 15,000 of them by sometime next century…