Other hoppers do it too

(note dandelion scrap in mouth)

Remember all the Scudderia mexicana handfeeding? Guess what, even more severe nervous wrecks like Schistocerca nitens can also be picked up and given snacks too! This specimen had highly idiosyncratic eating habits very unlike those of the tettigoniids (which strongly prefer high-energy items like sugar and pollen). It took a few bites out of lawn grasses (never seen any other polyphagous grazing invert eat lawn!) and white clover foliage intermittently while wandering; it refused to eat white clover flowers and had minimal interest in wet raisin, and after some persuading and hesitation decided to violently ingest an entire dandelion inflorescence. It then palpated and possibly chewed a second dandy but was evidently not interested, and later flew off.

Despite the refusal of dandy two, no alarm behaviors were induced upon offering, so here is a video demonstrating proper etiquette when feeding easily frightened Orthoptera! Note that S. mexicana and Phaneroptera nana appear to be only frightened by sudden tactile stimuli, while most S. nitens specimens (not this one of course) will panic when they see close-range abrupt movements.

One (1) luck obtained!

Unfortunately, my current lawn's syrphid biodiversity consists almost exclusively of Toxomerus marginatus, which float around in sparse clouds near tasty grass inflorescences and dandelions. Fortunately, last Saturday I photographed a rare aberrant marginatus specimen! If you view the fullsized image you may notice that its tail is crooked and has a lopsided splotch.

April Fool's 2020

I can't wait to FINALLY key all my Coniontis to species!

I sure am pleased with myself for duping two bugguide editors in a row!

As always, click to zoom!

Now grape-flavored!

I decided to acetone the red lichens today, because a greenbottle had been walking around and possibly on them.

As expected, the red pigment (probably chiodectonic acid, but since the taxonomy is unclear I can't be sure) rapidly dissolved, eventually causing the big thallus to turn brownish green and the smaller fragments to be completely white. If I recall correctly the white compounds do not dissolve in acetone, and since the big one had less of them it would explain the difference.

Then the big thallus (not the others) turned purple. I can only hope it wasn't killed by the chemical reaction. Edit: even violent rinsing failed to remove the purple; I threw them out.

Spring minor updates

Brown Male sure enjoys its sunbaths

- Pomacea diffusa specimen is now feeding actively again!

- The green discoloration previously mentioned on red mystery Herpothallon appears to be yellow now; whether this is caused by improper misting, sunburn, or conditions outside my control is unclear. Red regions also appear to be fading in color. A Candelaria(?) thallus also appears to be yellowing for the wrong reasons; during an unexpected artificial-shade failure it presumably became sunburned too (and since it was acetone rinsed its natural bright yellow sunscreen was washed off, so presumably the new yellow is from moribund algae). The blackish jelly lichen displays no apparent ill health though, even though such things are supposed to throw violent tantrums during air pollution. In any case, since all red mystery thalli survived for a suspiciously long period of time under extreme hydration frequency before showing signs of thallus damage, and since some reds still appear healthy, I suspect that the experiment is not a failure yet. Some of the mosses on the largest red's wood block are still green and seemingly fine.

- After several embarrassing incidents the brown Scudderia mexicana male has lost its semi-tameness but fortunately I compensated it with some extra desserts. I have continued failing miserably at filming courtship behavior due to a lack of receptive females, and will not be watching the male regularly any longer.

Herpothallon rubrocinctum(?) update

All rubrocinctum(?) samples are evidently not dead; some of the true mosses they came with have withered but others are perfectly fine. Samples do not appear to have grown a single millimeter. There is an unusually green discoloration near the side of the thallus. The small thallus fragment shown in the previous post has become entirely white except for its red regions; others remain pale blue-green (and at least one of the other small fragments have yellowed slightly, presumably from an accidental sunburn). I have noticed that lichens on small wood chunks are hard to water properly, since they easily become too flooded and then dry out with equal speed.

More fun misadventures with Scudderia

brown male eats pollen with a green female

Recently I have found that Scudderia mexicana habituates to tactile stimulation during strong winds; it fails to react to even severe battering by nearby swaying leaves and likewise fails to react when scooped up in the hand:

same female as above

Interestingly today I have also found that even during nonwindy days it is possible to hold them, as long as pollensticks are provided as bribery (and sudden movements are avoided). Several reports exist of captive-raised Scudderia spp. becoming permanently fearless; I encourage keepers of other long-lived Tettigoniidae to experiment with desensitization training too. Unfortunately Phaneroptera nana does not currently seem to be active in my area for some reason, so I was unable to test my ideas on it.


S. mexicana is, as previously mentioned, a highly sedentary animal when sufficiently satiated (even during the night); I have recently been playing with a brown and slightly bowlegged (harmless mismolt?) male, which currently seems to shuttle between two semiclearly defined perches in my front yard every large handful of hours. I have seen the same specimen in the distant past, so evidently the sunny CA weather has allowed it a long life.

As with other specimens, it is quite incompetent at selecting camouflaged locations and even more incompetent at holding onto food detached from its host plant:

Fortunately all specimens somehow apparently suffer little mortality risk even when sitting on weirdly colored succulents for days or eating the bright pink/yellow pollensticks I have provided, even though hummingbirds and small brown/yellow birds regularly fly around the area.


My current attempts at obtaining a receptive female for it and documenting courtship are quite unsuccessful;

(note the exposing of dorsal abdomen by the male)

In any case, it is pleasant to be able to interact with a bunch of wild hoppers without inducing stress! Updates soon, if I succeed in courtship documentation.

Possibly exciting lichen update

so pale

I have just noticed that all watered samples of the thing-which-appears-to-be-Herpothallon-rubrocinctum have turned white to some degree, some after only a couple of hydration days! Appearances strongly suggest that this is not algal bleaching but in fact rapid sunscreen production by the fungus. Hopefully this means that I will soon see some growth!

(unfortunately, due to problems involving atranorin, the natural unidentifiability of drab microlichens, and my shortage of sterilized delicups a large portion of my new thalli are still in storage; furthermore several days ago one of the tiny green foliicolous dots bleached to apparent death seconds after a watering event, presumably because I accidentally snapped it in half)

More excellent lichens

tasty dots (with gray cream)!

Here are some other lichens Hazel sent me; since many lichens need microscopy and chemtests for ID, I will write detailed analyses on them later. As always, click to zoom!

foliicolous party mix

apparently a jelly lichen

the worm-shaped lirellae(?) are quite pleasant

pale mint when wet (otherwise white)

same colorchange behavior as the other one

A brief intermission

The Bagrada hilaris female had been its usual self during the first several days of January, though refusing to stay planted on its food after eagerly proboscising it; another few days later it was deader than a bag of cricket flour.

I am quite appalled, since I suspect that there may have been a problem with hostplant quality; many specialist oligophagous herbivores are prone to mysterious tantrums if they smell that a particular host is excessively well-defended or lacking in nutrition. I imagine it could have been easily averted by providing a wider selection of different brassicaceans to it each day, since this has worked well in the past when it probed and rejected one leaf or floret. Unfortunately, my now-constant lack of sanity (and thus energy) had been causing some problems with plan implementation and furthermore I could not have released the poor hemipteran anyways; why are brassicacean weeds always rare when you really need them? I am tired of detecting potential ethical disasters and consistently failing to avert them despite frantic efforts.

In any case r-strategists are built for high mortality rates anyways; I suppose I can tentatively hope that whatever I did to it is less unpleasant than its natural fate...? After all despite the frequent broccoli shortages I did fish it out of the swimming pool and allow it to live several months longer than wild specimens (which I presume are literally annoyed to death by heapfuls of desperate males on a regular basis). Those broccoli shortages were still awfully long, though.





Fortunately the Pomacea diffusa specimen is still doing quite well, though it hasn't stopped fasting yet.

New Year's "fireworks"

Introduction

Unfortunately, my recent research strongly seems to imply that Physciella chloantha can only grow several millimeters each year even under extremely frequent hydration; fortunately, since "adult" chloantha thalli are naturally rather small this means that under such a growth rate there will in fact be a significant proportional increase in their size after several years. Unfortunately, it is still a rather slow growth rate, although at least it is faster than that of many non-synanthropic lichens.

Fortunately, some lichens still grow much faster than chloantha. These include the "obligately" foliicolous ephemerals (more on that later), but also some larger-bodied types such as Peltigera and Herpothallon (sidenote: Peltigera is one of the few lichens that have successfully been grown as a non-axenic whole thallus indoors; Moss Grower's Handbook reports that it pops up occasionally in cultivated moss setups as a very minor pest).


Death and tax(onomi)es

Hazel of Hazel's Science Things has been generous enough to supply me with a number of lichens freshly imported from Florida and Ohio, and among the most notable is the red and mint-green thing pictured above and below (interestingly it stays green even when dry):

the pointy things are true mosses

This is, um, er..., perhaps a specimen of Herpothallon rubrocinctum. "My" reference book Lichens of North America states that H. rubrocinctum is completely unmistakeable; I am not sure whether it means "no other species with identical appearance exists in NA" though. Furthermore, the cryptogam specialist I had been sending my specimens to lost all confidence in redstriped Herpothallon ID after I found a dichotomous key and an unrelated image implying that H. globosum was red and stripy; another lichen person the first one called in was similarly terrified.

I am currently waiting for a third opinion on the matter.


Herpothallon rubrocinctum: an ecological overview

Available evidence gives me the strong impression that any possibly-confusable species are only other Herpothallon; thus, they have some probability of being ecologically similar.

Information on rubrocinctum habitat appears to be surprisingly sparse in the scientific research literature; it seems to be one of the poster children of lichenworld, presumably due to its bright coloration, and is frequently mentioned on nature sites targeting non-researchers. Other lichenized members of the Arthoniaceae are normally drab in color, barely recognizable as lichens or even live organisms to the untrained eye, and receive essentially no attention from anyone at all; they appear to be equivalent to the tiny brown beetles and parasitoid wasps which tormented entomologists mention using phrases like "hostplant unknown" and "genus revision desperately needed; multiple undescribed cryptic spp. present". Ironically, I do not perceive rubrocinctum as beautiful in coloration; since color-based attractiveness seems to be controlled by modifiable instincts (perhaps the fruit-seeking ones? I'm not a psychologist) and is apparently not an inherent/objective property of objects, I appear to have accidentally trained my subconscious mind to associate only muted color palettes with prettiness. Spending massive quantities of time looking at drab tenebrionid/carabid beetles has some bizarre side effects, I guess! (Not that I care either way, since I am mostly just interested in extracting science from the thalli.)

After a brute-force scan of every rubrocinctum paper in existence(!) on Google Scholar, I have assembled a tentative map of its preferences:

- Colonized substrate known to include a wide variety of native and non-native bark/mosses (the pictured thallus is in fact smothering the mosses to death), but also rarely rock and angiosperm leaves; I imagine it is theoretically capable of colonizing plastic, like many other foliicolous lichens. (NOTE: I have previously suggested that Physciella chloantha may also be plastic-colonizing due to its ability to grow on top of mosses; however, since I have never seen reports of it growing on angiosperm leaves or plastic in the wild, and it seems intolerant of extreme smoothness, if it can grow on plastic special conditions are likely needed to help it hydrate and attach properly.)

- It is widespread throughout the humid tropics, although it may rarely also occur in the dry zones of such areas; one paper reported it was present even on several environmentally degraded farmland areas. Another reported that it was extremely water-repellent, likely to prevent drowning during heavy rains. An illustration within mentioned that the exposed thallus surface is superhydrophobic; conversely, the side in contact with the bark is riddled with a complex network of channels to collect and rapidly drain water. My own observations confirm the repellence; specimens appear to dry out quite quickly even compared to other lichens despite thorough spraying. Finally, a third paper mentions that Floridian specimens it studied had constant 24-hr access to water except for a few hours at noon; I will try to keep my specimens constantly sprayed whenever the sun is active (lichens can't photosynthesize in darkness anyways, so inducing nighttime dormancy should probably save energy).

- A few papers mention that it has been found on acid bark, although I could not find if it prefers acidity or merely tolerates it; I did not see any reports mentioning its presence on neutral or calcareous substrates. Hazel reports that the hostplant of the ones sent to me is Quercus (oak), which is indeed acidic unless it has been calcified by aerial dusts. To be safe I will be watering it and all the other Florida lichens (the local region apparently has acidic rain) with distilled mineral-free water; if what a paper told me about bark pH is correct, then the bark acids will acidify neutral water applied to it.


Unrelated bonus paper

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/231794852_A_new_species_of_Arthonia_is_a_pest_in_an_orchid_nursery

As mentioned above, many Arthonia (including this one) are nondescript mold-like films. Do note that in the back it mentions several other lichens naturally occurring or successfully cultivated in greenhouses.