Flight Behavior

This was my first encounter with the work of award-winning author Barbara Kingsolver ("Her 1998 bestseller, The Poisonwood Bible, won the National Book Prize of South Africa, and was shortlisted for both the Pulitzer Prize and PEN/Faulkner Award.)  I was directed to this particular book by a reader who (correctly) thought the discussion of Monarch butterflies so central to the book would be of interest to me.

The title refers both to the migratory behavior of the Monarchs and (I presume) to the geographically-shorter but equally complex "flight" of the female protagonist from an increasingly restrictive lifestyle in the mountains of southern Appalachia.  I found the latter aspect of the book more compelling than the commentary on climate change (which for me would amount to "preaching to the converted").   I spent 20+ years living in central Kentucky and working with many people whose lifestyle and worldview were not much different from that of Dellarobia Turnbow, the protagonist of the novel.  Kingsolver's portrayal is "spot on" - not surprising, since she herself was raised in rural Kentucky.

I won't attempt a full review of the novel.  The discussion of Monarch behavior and physiology is comprehensive and well-informed, and will provide some additional insights even to committed butterfly enthusiasts.  This detail was new to me:

"Hester called the butterflies "King Billies."  She seemed to think each one should be addressed as the king himself.  "There he goes, King Billy," she would say. (p. 74)

I had to look it up, since my Kentucky acquaintances never used the term.

The name Monarch is probably related to the eponymous appellation "King Billy" used by Canadians; the butterfly has the black and orange colors associated with William of Orange, Coregent with Mary after the Glorious Revolution of 1688 and the hero of Protestant England for his victory over the Catholic James II at the Battle of the Boyne.

I enjoy reading works by authors who have enough command of the language to create new turns of phrases or colorful metaphors and similes.  Some examples from this book:

"Her every possession was either unbreakable, or broken."

"The equipment was not necessarily new.  Most of it, in fact, seemed to be older than she was, "pre-Reagan admonistration," they both remarked dolefully, as if that had been some Appomattox Court House with the scientists on the losing side."

"She'd asked him to tidy things up, but men and barns were like a bucket of forks, tidy was no part of the equation."

"Dellarobia was amazed he could see roadkill from the backseat.  The animal was as flat as a drive-through hamburger."

"She'd seen the man's face.  Straining, neck veins and ligaments bulging.  He looked like a tied-up horse in a barn fire."

And I enjoy encountering new words.  (I haven't looked all these up yet):

"She could certainly bring over some more from Hester's, as they'd canned about fifty quarts.  How could a person never have heard of dilly beans?"

"It had no shoulder harnesses in the backseat, only lap belts, so the kids' car seats fit in a sigoggling way that was probably unsafe."

"niddy-noddy" and "Moorit" (a black sheep)

Author/cover image at top from Sustainable Kentucky, where the book is also reviewed.  The side embed is of a Monarch raised at our home last summer.

Butterfly tongue

Photo credit to Kata Kenesei & Barbara Orsolits, from the Hungarian Academy of Sciences Institute of Experimental Medicine in  Szeged, Hungary

From the Nikon Small World photomicrography competition for 2013.

Monarch butterflies in trouble

In recent months a variety of publications have highlighted observations made by people across the United States - that the population of Monarch butterflies seems to be in jeopardy.  First, from the Monarch Larva Monitoring Project:

Just what do the numbers show? While we wait until the end of the season when everyone has entered all of their data to do careful analyses, I pulled up the data from Minnesota, where 33 sites have been monitored this summer. The data from other northern states look pretty much the same.  These sites range from the Gunflint Trail way up in northeastern MN, where David MacLean has been monitoring a patch of swamp milkweed since 2010 (David saw no eggs or larvae at all in 2013), to New London-Spicer in west-central MN where Laura Molenaar and many students have been monitoring milkweed patches since 2004 (they saw a few monarchs this year), to many sites in the Minneapolis-St Paul metro area (my daughters and I have monitored our yard since 2002, and on my best day this year I found 20 eggs on about 135 plants). The graph below shows egg densities (as eggs per milkweed plant monitored, so a value of 0.20 means that there were 20 eggs on 100 plants, and value of 0.02 means there were 2 eggs on 100 plants).

The blue line represents a fairly typical year for Minnesota, with an early peak in May when the migrants arrive from the south, followed by a second one in July when the next generation is appearing.  Last years' (red line) was unusual because of record warmth in the early spring followed by a drought in late summer.  This year's data (green line) shows a dearth of Monarch eggs throughout the year.  Our family saw the same general pattern here in Wisconsin.  (More data and discussion from MIMP here).

The annual Madison (Wisconsin) Butterfly Count has data going back for over 20 years.  This year's result (only 2 Monarchs) is, by a wide margin, the fewest ever recorded.

The East Coast of the United States also saw a markedly reduced Monarch population, as reported in Native Plants and Wildlife Gardens:

Normally my wildlife gardens attract Monarchs in the spring... Normally, it is hard NOT to find Monarch eggs when peeking under milkweed leaves.  Normally, Monarchs continue to be seen in my garden into the fall when some days the garden glitters with dozens (if not many dozens) of Monarchs.

As always, the dinner table was set for Monarchs in my garden this year. Offerings included the magic combination of native nectar plants and stands of milkweed. But this year (between June and mid-September), I have seen a total of 11 Monarchs in my garden and found only 1 caterpillar.  In over 30 years of gardening for wildlife I have never seen so few Monarchs in my garden. Each day I check my milkweed stands for holes in leaves and each day I am disappointed to find all leaves intact and untouched. The absence of Monarchs unnerves and alarms me.  Something is very wrong.

Purely for dramatic effect, I've illustrated this post at the top with a pair of remarkable photographs taken by Dan Sonnenberg, who spotted this road warrior in central Wisconsin in mid-October, presumably trying to migrate south after a rocky summer.  He noted that "it still flies."  Now I'll emphasize that mechanical trauma from predation is not the cause of nationwide decline in the population; for that we have to look at habitat loss.

Habitat loss is discussed at Yale Environment 360.  Monarchs are evolutionarily adapted to feed only on milkweed, the population of which has markedly diminished after the introduction of Roundup-ready crops that grow in weed-free fields.  

Additionally, Monarchs from the Midwest overwinter in the mountains of Mexico, where the trees they assemble on have been harvested for wood.  A MonarchWatch survey this past spring showed a record low number of Monarchs in the Mexican mountains:

The percentage of forest occupied by monarch butterflies in Mexico, used as an indicator of the number of butterflies that arrive to that country each winter, reached its lowest level in two decades. According to a survey carried out during the 2012-2013 winter season... the nine hibernating colonies occupy a total area of 2.94 acres (1.19 ha) of forest – representing a 59% decrease from the 2011-2012 survey of 7.14 acres (2.89 ha).

 

I'll close with a photo of a magnificent, healthy Monarch I photographed in our garden during my blogcation -

-nectaring on New England aster, harvesting one of the few locally-available energy sources on his 1500-mile migration to Mexico.   It's so sad to see them disappearing.

A gynandromorph of the Common Blue butterfly

I have featured gynandromorphs before.  This one is particularly nice because of the striking sexual dimorphism of the species.

Photo by Burkhard Hinnersmann, via Gerard Vlemmings' The Presurfer.

Linkdump

A further update from Krebs on Security on skimming devices and fake PIN pads installed at gas station gas pumps.

And from PC Magazine's Security Watch a reminder to never plug your phone into a charger you don't own (as for example at a hotel):  "Any current iPhone is vulnerable to this attack. The only defense is a very simple rule: don't plug your phone into a charger you don't own. If you do, you could find your supposedly-secure iOS device totally owned by malware."

An awesome gallery of 42 photographs of glasswing butterflies.

A column at Scientific American encourages Americans to abandon traditional grass lawns in favor of other plantings.

From the archives of British Pathe, ten tragedies caught on news film.

As a result of climate change, ticks are devastating moose populations.  "They can send a moose to its death, with up to 150,000 dining on every calf, cow and bull in certain parts of the Granite State, wildlife biologists estimate. There was a time when eggs laid in this age-old cycle perished on winter snow. But that hasn’t happened lately in New Hampshire... As the number of ticks explodes, moose have disappeared by the thousands in areas where they were most abundant. Many of those still alive are eerily thin, with rib cages visible through ragged skin. They are mere shadows of themselves, zombies with antlers."

It is NOT true that there are testicle-eating fish in the waters of Scandinavia.

A former Vogue editor has written a book about "size zero" model...

On another shoot I was chatting to one of the top Australian models..."My flatmate is a 'fit model', so she's in hospital on a drip a lot of the time." A fit model is one who is used in the top designer ateliers, or workrooms, and is the body around which the clothes are designed. That the ideal body shape used as a starting point for a collection should be a female on the brink of hospitalisation from starvation is frightening.

A gallery of over 50 photos of a shoe store that was closed up and left alone for 40 years.

A column at Salon offers "Eight signs the rich have way too much money."

As the conflict rages in Syria, Syrian-Americans sometimes find themselves at odds with one another. "Sectarian identity is a large part of Syrians, and it gets imported to America," he said. "Anti-Assad is just a code word for Sunni, for people who don't like to speak about it."

People in California pray at a tree that is "weeping God's tears."  Scientists say it is aphid excrement.

The Museum of Sex has a detailed description of the internal anatomy of the clitoris.

The Beatles were introduced to marijuana by Bob Dylan. "The Beatles didn't fall immediately under the spell of marijuana, but after a few months, according to John, they were "smoking it for breakfast," "Let's have a laugh" soon became their code line for "Let's have some marijuana."

Brief video depicts an impressive karate move.

Rattlesnakes (and other snakes) are important parameters in limiting the spread of Lyme disease by ticks.

Fruit juice may be worse for children than soda pop.  "A book from the 1920s on feeding children by L Emmett Holt says that you should give toddlers just one to four tablespoons (15-60ml) of fresh orange or peach juice. Compare this with today's 200ml children's juice boxes, which contain about 17g sugar, the equivalent of more than four teaspoons. The biggest problem with juice, as far as Lustig is concerned, is the lack of fibre."

Matt Taibbi at Rolling Stone tackles the college loan scandal.  "It's complicated. But throw off the mystery and what you'll uncover is a shameful and oppressive outrage that for years now has been systematically perpetrated against a generation of young adults... our university-tuition system really is exploitative and unfair, designed primarily to benefit two major actors [colleges/universities and the government]."

A sea snail hatched and grew under the skin of a little boy's knee.

Got a ceiling fan?  Put some colored tape on it and then turn it on.

In response to the question "What is a "dirty little (or big) secret" about an industry that you have worked in, that people outside the industry really ought to know?," a long discussion thread at Reddit details the workings of the funeral industry and how it exploits the consumer.

Photos at the top:  The caterpillar of the common Cabbage White butterfly is the only Midwestern butterfly larva that can be considered an agricultural pest.  So nobody raises them - except me.  I removed several from my wife's broccoli plants (which have dark green leaves) and put them in a container with some wilted iceberg lettuce (which was pale green), and was startled to see the multicolored frass in the container.  Next year I'm going to throw in some red cabbage and see how artistic the result will be.

A Monarch ecloses

I've watched the process many times, but it never fails to amaze me.  Today because of family obligations I had to miss a field trip with other enthusiasts to a butterfly "hot area" along the Wisconsin River.  But while I was at home, one of the Monarchs we had raised from an egg went through the process of eclosion; I've not previously documented the sequence for the blog, so I sat by the table on the screen porch (reading Cloud Atlas), waiting for the event. 

A glance at the chrysalis shows why it the eclosion was obviously going to be today.  The extraneous material at the top of the photo reflects the fact that we repositioned this chrysalis from its original location onto a stick.  To do this you need to make use of a tiny cremaster at the top of the chrysalis, using either glue or a tie.  A surgical suture works well, but if you don't have access to medical supplies, a bit of dental floss can suffice.

A view from the other side.  The head is at the very bottom.  Between the wings is the abdomen.

At 10:00 the chrysalis cracks...

... and the butterfly begins to emerge.

Switching back to the other side for a better view.  The head is free and he is grabbing the shreds of the chrysalis for a firm grip to support...

...the large abdomen, which pops out next.  That's all that's left of the "caterpillar-like" phase of his existence.  His antennae are now unwound.

Fully out, and hanging on for dear life.  The wings have come free, but at this early stage they are still soft and pliable.  The proboscis is coiled in front of his face.

Now comes the crucial phase; we never disturb a Monarch at this point.  He has to hang with his wings vertical and pump fluid from that distended abdomen through those dark veins to "inflate" the wings.  If he loses his grip and falls to a flat surface, he has to find somewhere to climb quickly, because if the wings harden in a crinkled shape he will be unable to fly.

A few minutes later the progress is evident.  At this point the wings are still soft, but they will harden over the next couple hours to make him flight-capable.

The last stage.  With the wings fully distended, the Monarch "dumps" his remaining meconium (the reddish-orange droplet at the tip of the arrow).  Just as an airplane pilot will jettison excess fuel in certain critical situations, the Monarch is getting rid of waste and excess weight. 

The two black dots (androconia/scent scales) on the hind wings (see top photo) carry pheromones and identify this fellow as a male.  He flew away several hours later.

Monarch eggs on milkweed pods

We were in the front yard yesterday when a Monarch sailed by.  She was touching down on various leaves, so we knew her mission was ovipositing rather than nectaring.  Then she did something unusual - rather than deposit the egg underneath a leaf, she placed it on a milkweed pod [in the image the egg is the upper, cream-colored sphere; the lower white blob is sap from the broken stem at right].  And again:

After she few away we searched the milkweed pods in the front garden and found 3 more eggs.  This was an interesting variation for us to encounter, because the archetypal location for Monarch eggs is on the underside of leaves (see here, and here).

In point of fact, the eggs are probably better camouflaged on the spiky pods than on the smooth leaves, but the other factor may be that at this time of year (mid-August), most of the leaves on the milkweed are mature and somewhat leathery in texture.  The newly-forming pods may provide a more tender food source for the emerging first instars.

The caterpillars that emerge from these eggs, should they survive to adulthood, will then fly to a valley in northern Mexico where their ancestors spent last winter.  The mind reels.

An American Lady (Vanessa virginiensis)

I was weeding the front garden when an orange butterfly, totally ignoring me, settled on the leaf of a nearby Pearly Everlasting.  She dipped her abdomen underneath the leaf, then flew away.  I knew she had oviposited, but I had to get a magnifying glass to identify the beautifully camouflaged egg...

... located in a paramedian position on the underside of the leaf.  In due course a tiny first instar emerged.  Even in their earliest stages, these caterpillars exhibit formidable body spikes -

- although this one seemed to be saying "OH HAI" as I used a fine-tiipped paint brush to transfer him/her to a fresh leaf.  In addition to the spikes, the little caterpillar constructed little "nests" of leaf debris (photos in my 2010 post on the life cycle of this butterfly).

Here it is in full adult regalia:

Several days after that photo, the caterpillar suspended itself from a branch of the Pearly Everlasting and transformed itself into a chrysalis:

A second one is nearby, and some of the "nest" debris is visible above.  When the butterfly eclosed, it hung for a while to pump fluid into the wing veins and let them harden to flight-capable rigidity.  During that time they are helpless, relatively docile and willing to pose for photos. 

I love the top image showing the diagnostic double eyespots on the undersurface of the hindwing (a close relative, the Painted Lady has four spots there), and the delicate coloration and venation pattern.  From the topside the colors are move vivid.

More information on this butterfly is available at Mike Reese's Wisconsin Butterflies website.  Those with more than a passing interest may want to peruse the University of Iowa's Red Admiral and Painted Lady Research Site.

Eastern Tailed-Blue (and a linkdump)

After a fist fight, a soccer referee stabbed a player to death.  So the player's friends and family "rushed into the field, stoned the referee to death and quartered his body.  Local news media say the spectators also decapitated Silva and stuck his head on a stake in the middle of the field."

Use this link to find out what words you can spell with your telephone number.

If you have a few minutes, read the post at Neatorama about North Sentinel Island - "the forbidden island" - whose inhabitants "are members of a hunter-gatherer tribe that has lived on the island for 65,000 years."  The Indian government protects these people by not allowing visitors to access the island.

In 1989 a passenger airliner crashed in Niger.  Families of the victims have created a stunning memorial in the desert.

A Reddit thread discusses "What is a book that once you finished, you just sat there in awe of what you just read?"  The most-upvoted entries are not surprising.

For homeowners:  three simple air-conditioner maintenance things-to-do.

An explanation of how swallowing parasites might help patients minimize the effects of auto-immune diseases like multiple sclerosis.

How polluters can "game the system" of carbon credits.

Video of cliff-diving monkeys (doing so obviously just for the joy of it).

"Researchers at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga decided to poll and interview non-believers to find out what kind of people abandon religious faith and why. Based on this research, the project authors were able to divide non-believers into six basic categories."

Telephone area code 321 in Florida received those numbers because they are the final digits in the countdown of a space launch.

Video of the Northern Lights, filmed in Scandinavia.

A Calvin and Hobbes documentary is coming to movie theaters and video-on-demand.

An instructable shows how to quickly create a mini-cake by stacking three doughnuts and covering them with frosting.

Possibly the worst ceremonial opening pitch of a baseball game.  Ever.

You can read the transcript of the astronauts of Apollo 10 discussing who among them was responsible for the fecal turd found floating through the air of the spacecraft.

The fastest lawn mower in the world is a Honda version that goes from 0 to 60 mph in four seconds.

Moose are dying in Minnesota.  "The population has nosedived in recent years, dropping to about a third of what it was in 2009. In the past year alone, their numbers plummeted 35 percent, leaving only about 2,700 moose. That’s a mortality rate unseen anywhere else in North America—in fact, in other parts of the continent, moose are thriving. But something, or a combination of somethings, is threatening to wipe out moose from the North Woods in less than a decade, if the current decline continues unabated."

I like this new pope.  "When Pope Francis embarked Monday morning for Brazil, where he will take an official week-long tour, he raised eyebrows around the world by carrying his own bag up the stairs to his flight out of Rome... Francis is seeking to demonstrate humility and a closer connection to regular Catholics, as well as signaling to other Vatican officials that they could stand to behave a bit less like royalty and more like priests."

Browse the 1963 Sears Toy Book (and be amazed at the prices).

Ten beautiful medieval maps.

Text and video about a young woman who vacationed in Peru and wound up with maggots in her brain.  "Rochelle said she remembered walking through a swarm of flies when in Peru and a fly had got inside her ear. But once she had shooed it away she thought nothing more of it."

How to make your own ice-cream sandwiches.

Jill Harness has created for Mental Floss a compilation of 62 of the world's most beautiful libraries.

Find out what names people in the Middle Ages gave to their dogs and cats.

The word "shitstorm" has an antonym.  I'll save you the click:  "candystorm."

You can make your own fabric softener at home.

Thumb drives are not eternal.  Lifehacker discusses how to minimize the chances of crucial data loss.

Few people know that "harpaxophilia" means "sexual arousal from being robbed or burglarized. The word comes from the Greek word ἅρπαξ, harpax, “robber” and -philia, “love”.

"Shave 'em dry" is a very rude song from the 1930s.   Audio and text at the link, both of which are totally NSFW.

Collectors Weekly offers a history of paper dolls.

Photo: The Eastern Tailed-Blue is a common butterfly in the Upper Midwest, one of about a dozen types in the Blues subfamily.   I photographed this fresh and strikingly pretty one this afternoon at Badger Prairie Park in Verona, Wisconsin.

Battered butterflies

The Coral Hairstreak above landed on me during a hike at the Schurch-Thomson Prairie last weekend.  It had lost its tail (perhaps to an attack by a jumping spider) and had a portion of both wings excised, probably by a bird.  Several weeks ago this Mourning Cloak nectared on milkweed in our garden:

In addition to the gross defects, he displayed a general raggedness consistent with age (he is probably almost a year old after having overwintered under the bark of a tree somewhere in the woods). 

Not all structural defects are the result of predation.  Butterflies lose scales from their wings after even minimal trauma, such as contact with vegetation, so that some "elderly" ones even become hard to identify.  Males of many species also partipate in vigorous aerial combat to defend territory (and are not afraid to try to intimidate humans).

For today's post I've harvested* photographs taken by members of the Southern Wisconsin Butterfly Association and submitted to the archives of the outstanding Wisconsin Butterflies website to show the remarkable hardiness of these seemingly fragile creatures.

From webmaster Mike Reese comes this photo of a Common Buckeye -

- and this one of a Juvenal's Duskywing nectaring on hawkweed:

Dan Foster spotted a Red Admiral missing most of one wing -

Ron Arnold found this Monarch similarly afflicted:

This Western White was documented by Ryan Brady:

The final five photos belong to Dan Sonnenberg, starting with this Great Spangled Fritillary -

Then this Eastern Comma -

A Harvester -

A very ragged Question Mark -

And finally, the award winner (if an award existed) for Most Battered Butterfly.  As the sun sets, this Red Admiral declares to the world "I AM BATMAN."

It's worth noting that these torn and tattered butterflies were not plucked off the radiators of vehicles at a truck stop.  All of them were photographed in the wild and were flight capable, demonstrating the impressive resilience of these remarkable creatures.

*some photos cropped by me of irrelevant vegetation.

"False heads" on hairstreak butterflies

The most interesting butterfly-related item I've read this month is an article in American Butterflies magazine (not available online) detailing a report in the Journal of Natural History ("Two heads are better than one: false head allows Calycopis cecrops (Lycaenidae) to escape predation by a Jumping Spider, Phidippus pulcherrimus (Salticidae)"), which describes how hairstreak butterflies use a "false head" on their rear ends to fool predators:

The present study tests the “false head” hypothesis by exposing a hairstreak butterfly, Calycopis cecrops, as well as many other Lepidoptera species as controls, to the attacks of the jumping spider, Phidippus pulcherrimus. The results unambiguously indicate that the “false head” is a very efficient strategy in deflecting attacks from the vital centres of the hairstreak butterfly whereas other similar-sized Lepidoptera fall easy prey.

The report is discussed in detail at the blog of the Florida Museum of Natural History:

When the hairstreak butterfly faced the jumping spider in an enclosed space, the butterfly successfully escaped 100 percent of the time. The study shows jumping spiders may have influenced evolution of some butterfly patterns and behaviors...When 11 other butterfly and moth species from seven different families were exposed to the jumping spider, they were unable to escape attack in every case.

Previously, scientists presumed that it was attacks by birds that drove the evolution of some butterfly wing patterns; now the role of the jumping spider has been delineated.   The jumping spider has superb near vision.  You would too, if you had eyes like this:

Unlike other butterflies, hairstreaks frequently move the hind wings that carry the false head pattern, a behavior that seems to increase in the presence of the spider.

For years I've noticed this back-and-forth "sawing" movement of the hind wings of resting hairstreak butterflies, without imagining that it served any adaptive purpose.  It obviously attracts the spider's attention, so that when the attack is launched...

...what the butterfly loses consists of nonvital structures.  Note also (in the top photo) how the "false head" is enhanced by the presence of the "tails" (which thus look like antennae).  So the function of the tails is not aerodynamic or decorative, but another adaptation for survival.  Fascinating - you learn something every day.

Top photo credit: Daniel Ruyle (aeschylus18917).  Bottom photo credit Andrei Surakov.

The barn of two butterfly enthusiasts

Photographed* in Marquette County, Wisconsin, on a "century farm" (owned by the same family for 100 years) where this weekend I enjoyed a delightful lunch in the shade of old trees in the front yard.  The current occupants have decorated their barn in a manner consistent with their interest in butterflies.

On the far left is a barn quilt depicting a stylized butterfly.  To the right of that are wooden appliques representing each species of butterfly that has been seen on the farm - handcrafted at a scale of 1 foot to 1 inch.  It's not only an artistic accomplishment, but a documentation of a remarkable "life list" of species from one location, reflecting the owners' devotion to maintaining a wide variety of habitats and plants on their farm.

*marginal quality image because it was backlit on a bright summer day.

Black Swallowtail

You met this little fellow when he was an egg on June 7.  You saw him again on June 20 as a caterpillar.  Then on the 29th I documented his transformation into a brown chrysalis, which remained visually unchanged up through July 5.  I checked it again last night and saw nothing of note, but this morning...

... the chrysalis was ripped open at the top, and he was clinging to the stick, wings dependent and fully inflated with fluid.  We left him like that, because these guys need time for the wings to harden into a stiffness that will allow powered flight.  He sat immobile in the screen porch while a summer thunderstorm passed, then began to fan his wings, showing the traces of blue that mark the male's color pattern (as opposed to the more extensive blue that characterizes the female.)

This afternoon he signalled his readiness to leave by flying from the stick over to the screen.  We took him outdoors and he dropped those wings to a total horizontal position as soon as he detected the sunlight, held that position for a few minutes to soak up some solar energy and raise his body temperature, then soared up and away.