A Year of Garden Bees and Bugs E-Book

Dominic Couzens

• Herausgeber: Batsford
• Kategorie: Lebensstil
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 207

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024

Beschreibung

A fascinating journey into the secret life of insects, with QR codes linked to videos that bring every creature to life. Just as birds have yearly rhythms, so do bees, beetles, butterflies and other insects. Wildlife experts Dominic Couzens and Gail Ashton discover 52 minibeasts from around the world. They tell the story of what is happening week-by-week in the insect world, in our own backyards, window boxes and in hidden corners of our homes. From the daily grind of the house spider building a new web each morning, to the vast appetites of ladybirds, which can devour hundreds of aphids a day, and the glory of the Stag beetle's maiden flight. We delve into the world of the lethal Sydney funnelweb spider in Australian gardens, the migratory mission of the Monarch butterfly in America and the life of the backdoor scorpions in South Africa. In among the seasonal behaviour, the authors have woven history and folklore. These brilliant stories are complemented by wonderful illustrations by Lesley Buckingham that bring out the beauty of the entomological world. A QR code for each entry takes you to a video file to further explore the habits of these intriguing creatures. Revealing the true wonder of our insect neighbours, this book will appeal to all nature lovers.

Leseprobe

Contents

WEEK 1

Sydney funnel-web spider

WEEK 2

Common brimstone

WEEK 3

Common banded hoverfly

WEEK 4

Mayfly

WEEK 5

Buff-tailed bumblebee

WEEK 6

Springtail

WEEK 7

Driver ant

WEEK 8

Cotton harlequin bug

WEEK 9

Ashy mining bee

WEEK 10

Peacock butterfly

WEEK 11

Dark-edged bee-fly

WEEK 12

Luna moth

WEEK 13

Pondskater

WEEK 14

Backswimmer

WEEK 15

Western honey bee

WEEK 16

Milkweed leaf beetle

WEEK 17

Black widow

WEEK 18

Seven-spot ladybird

WEEK 19

German wasp

WEEK 20

Cuckoo wasp

WEEK 21

Violet carpenter bee

WEEK 22

Globe skimmer

WEEK 23

Rose chafer

WEEK 24

Common red soldier beetle

WEEK 25

Garden tiger moth

WEEK 26

Dog-day cicada

WEEK 27

Common black ant

WEEK 28

Eastern tiger swallowtail

WEEK 29

European stag beetle

WEEK 30

Aphid

WEEK 31

Common froghopper

WEEK 32

Hummingbird hawk-moth

WEEK 33

Marmalade hoverfly

WEEK 34

True katydid

WEEK 35

Fall field cricket

WEEK 36

Ivy bee

WEEK 37

Black and yellow garden spider

WEEK 38

Monarch butterfly

WEEK 39

Red imported fire ant

WEEK 40

Foam grasshopper

WEEK 41

Common green lacewing

WEEK 42

Giant house spider

WEEK 43

European cranefly

WEEK 44

Large yellow underwing moth

WEEK 45

European garden spider

WEEK 46

Peacock jumping spider

WEEK 47

Cape Mounted Rifles bean beetle

WEEK 48

European mantis

WEEK 49

Red postman butterfly

WEEK 50

Greenbottle

WEEK 51

Common earwig

WEEK 52

Woodlouse

Introduction

FOR THOSE OF US WHO LOVE THE NATURAL WORLD, the passage of the year can be joyfully measured by the appearance of different animals, plants and fungi. In the temperate world, where seasons are extreme, the first swallow of spring or the first flush of spring flowers can lift the heart, while a flock of geese flying high overhead may presage autumn and the thick coat of a squirrel is a sign of winter to come. In the tropics, seasons are defined more by the rains, and there is often the same burst of bird song and fruiting trees in the wake of a downpour. The ebb and flow of the living world throughout the year is as certain as the turning of the tides, the rising of the moon and the setting of the sun.

What many enthusiasts don’t realize, though, is that the passage of the year can also be defined by the appearance of invertebrates – animals without backbones, but often with multiple legs and sometimes with none; that’s bees, flies, worms, woodlice and spiders, to name a few. Most of us recognize that butterflies are seasonal, and that bees are commoner in the summer than the winter. But not everybody realizes that different sorts of butterflies, and different sorts of beetles and flies and bees and wasps, make their appearance in such a way that you could order your seasonal clock by them. For example, a temperate garden will see a succession of bees, with a flush of mining bees in the spring, carpenter bees in the summer and ivy bees in the autumn. Beetles are the same – in the UK we have oil beetles in spring, cockchafers in May and common red soldier beetles in July. The gloriously shiny Christmas beetle appears in parts of Australia at – yes, you guessed it – Christmas, felicitously resembling a tree ornament. In temperate regions, we even have special seasonal insect events – flying ant day in the UK, usually in July, and in the US the periodical cicadas in late spring and dog-day cicadas in high summer.

It isn’t just the sight of invertebrates that sparks our imaginations; there are sounds at certain times of the year that are simply quintessential to the passage of the seasons. The low, dense hum of a queen bumblebee rumbling into earshot, a crescendo that announces her inaugural flight to find food and set up home, kick-starts our sensory journey into spring. The pianissimo chirruping of crickets after dark, and the furtive stridulations of amorous grasshoppers in dry, sun-baked meadows are the sultry soundtrack of high summer. Then there is the almost imperceptible crinkling of an adult dragonfly emerging from its exuvia into the sunshine on a warm still morning, or the muffled, glassy clunk of a moth colliding with the outside light. There is a comforting familiarity to the almost continual, soft hum of a multitude of invertebrates, all keeping the world ticking happily over.

Globally, we are incredibly lucky to be able to share many insects across land masses. A sudden swelling of insect numbers at certain points in the year, marks the end of myriad transcontinental epic migratory journeys, whether it be the flamboyant procession of the monarch butterfly (see page 160) or the unassuming appearance of millions of hoverflies, so quiet that we hardly notice their appearance. It’s difficult to comprehend how such small, delicate creatures can undertake some of the planet’s most epic voyages, breaking many records along the way, but that they do, and the arrival of the marmalade hoverfly, for example, in our gardens in the UK can be equally as exciting as the screaming of the first swift above our heads.

Why the sudden commotion in spring? Like most animals, invertebrates exploit a window of opportunity to feed and reproduce, and that open window is never wider than during the warmest months, when daylight hours are in plentiful supply. Plants send forth new growth in the form of leaves and flowers, providing a glut of food resources for phytophagous (plant-eating) organisms. This in turn lures out the zoophages (carnivores), and thus the food web spans out into a complex network of feeding and hunting interactions in the soil, plants, and trees in our gardens. The end of winter heralds more than just a change in behaviour for many invertebrates. Lots of insects undergo a major transformation, revealing themselves to the spring sunshine in very different guises; having spent the winter as pudgy, hungry larvae under the ground or in rotting wood, they become armoured, winged adults. A few, even hardier, sorts can remain active throughout even the coldest conditions and take their own places in the invertebrate calendar. Snow fleas (Boreidae), for example, only come out in the coldest months, (flying in the face of the general rule that insects are beasts of summer) and are most visible against a backdrop of crisp, white snow.

Those warmth-seeking invertebrates that are tough enough to survive the winter haven’t been far away either. They have hunkered down in sheltered nooks and crannies, their metabolisms slowed down to the point of basic life-support, known as diapause – the invertebrate version of hibernation. The first beams of warm sunlight trigger behaviour on a monumental scale, acting as a catalyst for the emergence of millions of tiny organisms. These organisms, in fulfilling their reproductive destinies, circumstantially perform essential ecosystem services on the side, such as pollination, recycling, fertilization and terraforming, without all of which our beautiful planet Earth would be uninhabitable.

The rewards of sharing our space with invertebrates are manifest. They can be seen in the pollinated flowers that bear fruit; in the soil structure that they engineer, which produces healthy plants, captures carbon and mitigates flooding; in the birds and mammals that eat them and feed them to their growing young; in the honey that sweetens our food; and in the astonishing array of natural pest control services that far surpass the abilities of modern pesticides. With this in mind, wouldn’t it be lovely for us all to embrace their seasonal return and proclaim their arrival in our gardens? For they are, indeed, the little things that make the world go round.

So, the invertebrate year is just as thrilling as the changing bird year, or as the yearly march of flowering trees and herbs. In some ways, it is even more satisfying, because you usually don’t need to travel to see it. There is perhaps no better way to appreciate the passage of the seasons than in your own garden. A temperate garden might only have visits from 20–30 species of birds in the course of the year, while the same garden will have at least ten times as many insects – and those are just the ones that are easy to notice. Imagine a life where you can be thrilled by the first appearance of the year of hundreds of species! Every day would be one to treasure.

That is why we have written this book. Both of us adore all aspects of the natural world, but we are particularly keen to blow the trumpets of the smaller characters in the garden, the overlooked ones – even the reviled ones. Yes, you may dread the coming of the ‘bitey, sucky and stingy’ invertebrates, and the ones that love to investigate our food shortly after sitting on poo. But in our haste to reject these species, we are denying ourselves the opportunity to observe one of the most fascinating groups of animals on Earth, and marvel at their relatively short yet remarkable lives.

The yearly appearance is just one delightful aspect of invertebrate watching, but there are many others. The world of invertebrates can be brutal, from straightforward carnivory and food theft to the more sinister worlds of cannibalism and even eating each other from the inside. But it is also astonishing, and often poorly known; it is an entire universe just waiting to be discovered and enjoyed. We hope that this journey through the invertebrate year will inspire you to look a little closer at our most diverse and fascinating neighbours.

Dominic Couzens and Gail Ashton,January 2023

WEEK 1

Sydney funnel-web spider

Atrax robustus

AUSTRALIA; BODY LENGTH 25–35 mm (1–211/64 in)

THE AUSTRALIAN SUMMER IS IN FULL swing, and, in small, untidy corners of suburbia, the arachnid army is rising. This is no normal awakening of eight-legged creatures; these are special. The Australians are proud of their neighbourhood spiders, in the same way that they often share that their continent is bursting with the most toxic creatures on Earth.

Years ago, my sister moved to Sydney’s North Shore and straight away, sited prominently in her kitchen, was a glossy booklet of potentially dangerous invertebrate cohabitees. She had brought young children on her adventure and she felt she needed to know exactly which spiders to fear. Few homegrown Australians buy such booklets, but new immigrants, and especially visiting tourists, are fair game to profit from frissons of arachnid terror.

The truth is, though, that Australia does have some venomous spiders, and some are dangerous, even deadly. The reputation of the continent hinges mainly on one notorious species, the Sydney funnel-web spider. Meetings of early European settlers with funnel-webs didn’t always go well (for either party), so a legend was born. Who would believe it – a spider that could kill you? Over the years, about 13 people are known to have met this fate; one unfortunate child died within 15 minutes. Nowadays, antivenoms are widely available, but a bite is still a very serious medical emergency.

This is one of the very few spiders in the world in which the male actually invites the female to eat him during mating. Does it hurt, does the triumph of reproduction surpass everything? It would be interesting to know.

The funnel-web makes a good villain. Even those who despise arachnids can admit that some spiders are elegant, or even beautiful. But the Sydney funnel-web is sturdy, 25–35 mm (1–1⅓ in) in length, metallic black and possessed of outsized fangs that look like weapons. Even as a dedicated lover of invertebrates, it’s hard not to recoil at the sight of it. When threatened, spiders rear up and show their fangs, and if they bite they don’t let go.

For most of the year, funnel-webs reside in cracks and fissures, or on the ground, and are not met with except during gardening, or endeavours such as clearing outhouses or sheds. However, about now, male funnel-webs, the ones with the deadly bite, are wandering around in search of mates and crossing our paths. Some invariably fall into the pools of affluent Sydneysiders, where they don’t drown, but instead curl up and become torpid. Fortunately, they take a while to wake up if met with during a swim.

In many of the very same gardens and yards of suburban Australia lives another dangerous spider – the redback. Its poison is possibly just as toxic, but it lacks the feisty attitude of its neighbour and has much smaller fangs. Nonetheless, deaths from redback spiders are also known, in similar numbers to the funnel-web. This spider is very similar in pattern to its famous North American relative, the black widow (see page 76), with a shiny black abdomen and characteristic red marking. Living in a web above ground, it’s easy to disturb when performing a neglected household task. Even if you do have a bad day after getting bitten, it’s worth remembering that your suffering at the fangs of a female redback will be less decisive than that of the male. This is one of the very few spiders in the world in which the male actually invites the female to eat him during mating. Does it hurt, does the triumph of reproduction surpass everything? It would be interesting to know.

Oddly enough, despite living cheek by jowl with two genuinely dangerous neighbours, Australians themselves tend to be instead spooked by a different spider species altogether. It can defend itself and bite, but the huntsman isn’t dangerous, unless you are prone to a heart attack. Instead, it is very large and extraordinarily fast, and seems to be able to run in any direction from a standing start, even if this is a vertical wall. If one is on the other side of the room, you still feel as though it could reach you in an instant if you lower your guard.

Having heard so much about Australia’s dangerous spiders, my first encounter with a funnel-web was not as exciting as I’d hoped. It was in the car park for The Three Sisters, a beauty spot in the Blue Mountains, and it had been unceremoniously squashed. It looked as though it had endured the ultimate ignominy – killed by a tourist.

WEEK 2

Common brimstone

Gonepteryx rhamni

EUROPE AND ASIA; WINGSPAN 60–74 mm (2⅓–3 in)

THERE ARE ALWAYS SOME JANUARY DAYS that play tricks, and sometimes the joker is a butterfly. A few years ago, I saw a brimstone in my garden in southern England on 11 January, an unseasonal sulphur sylph lighting up the winter sludge-scape. It did what bright, breezy brimstones always seem to do, appear from nowhere and then dash off to somewhere, as if late for an appointment. But it was, in fact, early – by a good two months – as in the UK the brimstone usually appears in March.

In common with many of our ‘spring’ butterflies, the brimstone overwinters as an adult. So, in fact, despite early year appearances, the more typical fliers among the daffodils and celandines in February and March are neither fresh nor new; by butterfly standards (many species only live in the adult stage for a fortnight or so), they are very old. All will have emerged from their pupae back in July or August and spent the autumn stocking up on nectar, putting on fat reserves for their winter sleep.

In the diminishing days of autumn, adult brimstones each seek out a sheltered bush or climber and settle down among the vegetation. Their wonderful, scalloped wing-edges so closely resemble leaves that it is virtually impossible to find them, especially among evergreen holly, bramble or ivy. But there they will reside for several months in a state of quiescence as the temperature drops. One of their extraordinary tricks is to synthesize glycerine, which acts as an antifreeze for their body fluids. Another is to expel as much water from their body as they can, to prevent the chances of ice forming in their tissues, which is fatal. Doing this, they can survive in external temperatures below –10 °C (14 °F). They can tolerate being covered in frost and snow.

It is quite a thought that, even in the depths of winter, in a wood or suburb of Europe, you can take a walk and pass by dozens of sleeping butterflies without knowing it.

Many people worry when they see an active butterfly in mid-winter, either a brimstone outside, or perhaps a peacock or small tortoiseshell flapping at a tinsel-decorated window. But this isn’t a disaster. An unseasonably warm day will sometimes usher the odd individual from its ‘slumber’, and a turning up of indoor radiators does the same. But torpor is not an open-and-shut biological state. Aroused brimstones fly around for a few hours and then return to their slumbers, none the worse for the experience – and perhaps, having found a winter flowering plant, dropping off again with a fuller stomach. If you find an indoor butterfly, put it gently in a cardboard box and take it to a shed, loft or outbuilding, and release it on a warm spring day.

The emerging adult brimstones of February and March might be aged citizens, but they are full of vim. Throughout their late summer and autumn lives as youthful butterflies they entirely eschewed reproductive behaviour. But now they feed on early nectar and quickly become frisky, mating and laying eggs in April and May. Having grown old disgracefully, a few adults might even survive to see in the next generation in midsummer. They will look worn and tatty, but they are among the longest-lived adult butterflies in the world. It is a delicious irony that the brimstone is so strongly associated with spring, by its nature ephemeral and brief.

It is quite a thought that, even in the depths of winter, in a wood or suburb of Europe, you can take a walk and pass by dozens of sleeping butterflies without knowing it.

Such is the buttery colour of the male brimstone that there is a school of thought that the name ‘butterfly’ itself derives from this species and was then expanded to include all of its ilk. It’s one of those assertions that is satisfying, but lacks any shred of evidence. Or, to put it another way, it’s rubbish.

The truth is opaque and, in a way, far more interesting. It turns out that the word itself is so ancient that its origin is lost in the mists of time. It may derive from ancient times, unrecorded, an era we can only imagine. Maybe, back in prehistory, a hunter’s heart soared one day when he or she spotted an early brimstone flitting past the hulk of a grazing mammoth?

WEEK 3

Common banded hoverfly

Syrphus ribesii

EUROPE, ASIA AND NORTH AMERICA; WING LENGTH 7–11 mm (¼–½ in)

IN A FEW SHORT WEEKS FROM NOW, INSECT activity will start to hum. And no insect hums quite like the common banded hoverfly, also called the humming syrphus. In high summer, the sounds of many thousands of these hoverflies fluttering their wings will reverberate audibly from the sunlit, deciduous woodland canopy, creating that warm-weather buzz.

At the moment, however, in temperate regions of Europe, Asia and North America, those wings are silent and still. In fact, they haven’t formed yet. The common banded hoverfly is still a larva. Strictly speaking, it is a third-instar larva.

Last autumn already feels a long way away, but even in November, there would still have been some common banded hoverflies flying around – the last generation of the year. The females will have then laid their eggs and subsequent first- and second-instar larvae would have fed hungrily on the final available aphids of the year. They would have needed to be suitably merciless to fatten up enough for the long months ahead. Remarkably, these intermediate larvae bedded down with full tummies but without having done the usually necessary pre-diapause poo. Instead, the maggot-like creatures use the black fluids resulting from digestion to accumulate in their hindgut and this helps to help add an extra level of cryptic patterning to the exterior of the third instar, which usually lies prone among the leaf-litter.

There are countless millions of little fireworks everywhere out there, in every dusty drawer of every ecosystem, waiting for spring to light their fuse.

In a way, now, they are at the mercy of the elements. They have shut their development down (this is what diapause is), and are essentially, non-responsive. They have joined the great mass of inert invertebrates that abound everywhere, some as eggs, some as larvae and some as pupae. There are countless millions of little fireworks everywhere out there, in every dusty drawer of every ecosystem, waiting for spring to light their fuses.

There is an arch-enemy to combat first, though, and that is the cold or, to be more specific, the freezing cold. For most living things, ice getting into your body fluids is fatal. It messes up your cells and often causes them to rupture. You are unlikely to survive much of this.

So, diapausing invertebrates that are likely to be exposed to sub-zero temperatures during the winter have two options: freeze avoidance or freeze tolerance. The first option, freeze avoidance, is the option almost everything takes, whatever life-cycle stage it is at. Such animals spirit themselves away in sheltered places, especially underground, where freezing is less likely; cracks in bark, thick leaves and other such spaces are also well populated. And they synthesize chemicals, especially proteins, which act as anti-freezing agents, reducing the temperature at which the body fluids are prone to solidify. Most survive this way.

Smaller is the number that are freeze-tolerant, but the common banded hoverfly is among them. The trick, along with having anti-freezing agents in their cells, is to allow a certain amount of freezing, but in safe places, such as between the cells. If it is so cold that ice forms spontaneously, that is a problem. But instead, the larvae create or ingest ice nucleators, often proteins, which form the ‘nucleus’ around which ice crystals can form, in appropriate parts of the body. It seems that common banded hoverflies probably get their nucleators from the damp, woodland leaf litter. If it’s too dry, they cannot survive.

Of course, insects being insects, it is still more complicated than that. In many parts of this hoverfly’s range, the climate is temperate, and any periods of freezing are usually alternated with a thaw. In these uncertain conditions, some larvae may switch from tolerance to avoidance. Perhaps some individual larvae are predisposed to one or the other, affecting their chances of survival.

Whatever system they adopt, common banded hoverfly larvae are astonishingly good at winter survival. They have been known to stay alive in outside temperatures of –35 °C (–31 °F). For an insect associated with hot sunny days, that is pretty astonishing.

WEEK 4

Mayfly

Order Ephemeroptera

WORLDWIDE; NYMPHS TO 30 mm (1 in), ADULTS TO 12 cm (4¾ in)

THE MAYFLY IS FAMOUS FOR ONE THING above all – it ‘only lives for a day’. Its apparently sad fate is reflected even in English literature. The Romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, lamenting over the death of his friend John Keats, who died at the early age of 25, wrote in his elegy Adonais, published in 1821:

‘The sun comes forth, and many reptiles spawn;

He sets, and each ephemeral insect then

Is gather’d into death without a dawn,

And the immortal stars awake again.’

We should admit that the mayfly’s single day – and it is often just a few hours – is a good one, though. Mayflies spend their short lives dancing to the tune of reproduction, gathering into mating swarms and doing nothing else but seeking copulation. There is no time to eat during their frenzied hours, but if your time is brief …