Learning Another (Fly) Stitch in the Tapestry of Patchwork Prairie

After all the hoopla of the holidays, I'm finally getting back to my projects, particularly the one where I'm learning to identify the different insects that I've photographed in the yard over the last 7 years.

With that goal in mind, I've started posting some of the insects that I can't identify on bugguide.net.  This wonderful site has generous volunteers that identify the insects they can in photos shared by people from all around the country.

The last time I posted any photos on bugguide.net was almost 2 months ago, so I was rather surprised recently to get a message in my e-mail box saying that someone had added comments to one of my submissions.  Checking it out, I learned that one of the flies I had posted from early November had been identified as a particular species of tachinid fly, Archyatus marmoratus.  Which meant exactly what?

I had been pretty sure that the fly, which I observed feeding on aromatic aster blooms, was a tachinid.  And it was.  Tachinids are rather large flies that look like very hairy, even bristly, house flies.  Despite their homely appearance, they are considered a beneficial insect.  In their larval stage, they are parasitoids, because their larvae grow inside a variety of other insects and kill those insects as they grow.  Often the species parasitized is specific to the species of tachinid fly, so finding out the species of tachinid fly gave me a good chance of learning how this particular insect fit within the community of plants and animals in our yard.

Googling was in order...and rapidly accomplished.

I didn't find a lot on Archyatus marmoratus during my quick Google search, but what I did find was reassuring, even exciting.  This tachinid species is not completely host specific, but it does parasitize caterpillars in a specific group of moths, Noctuids, particularly within a group of caterpillars that includes armyworms, budworms and other pest species.  The female fly lays her eggs in the area where host caterpillars are likely to occur and, after the eggs hatch, the young fly larvae hitch onto appropriate host caterpillars when they come by.  Each caterpillar that picks up a tiny fly larva eventually gives up its life, producing one adult tachinid fly in the process.

So, for every adult fly I see, an armyworm or budworm gave its life.  For every adult A. marmoratus fly I see, an armyworm or budworm didn't make it to adulthood to reproduce.  For every adult A. marmoratus I see, a new generation of tachinid flies has a good chance of appearing to help keep next year's armyworm and budworm populations under control.  And along the way, my asters get some extra help in pollination.

All in all, it's a mighty sweet deal, despite being all wrapped up in a pretty homely package.

Reconstructing the Biodiversity Records

What do these photos have in common?

The yellow-headed blackbirds that came through for a couple hours in April, 2009.....

The black and yellow garden spider that built a web across our patio door - and let me watch her eat her old web and spin a new web, early one morning....

A cowkiller velvet ant (a type of female wasp) discovering a ground nest, in September 2008, that she checked out for its suitability to lay an egg in....

An unusually colored cicada.....

Keeled treehoppers, being tended by ants, on giant ragweed....

Stilt bugs on a velvety gaura bloom at the end of June, 2008....

An adult spotted-winged antlion, resting on the side of the house in June, 2008....

Hatching wheelbugs in early May, 2008....

A goatweed leafwing (butterfly) sheltering deep in the grass in mid-March, 2008....

What do all of these have in common?  I'd forgotten about many of these discoveries, or forgotten that I got good photos of them, but now I've rediscovered them as I sort through my old files and work to compile biodiversity lists for our 10 acres.

I've been missing in action for the last month or so.  While it's a busy time of year, the main reason is that I've been immersed in a new garden-related project, my personal biodiversity project:  The Plants and Animals of Patchwork Prairie.

I'm a collector at heart, so listing all of the species that I've noticed on our property resonates deeply for me.  These aren't "my" species, but it fascinates me to learn how many different plants and animals share this simple 10 acres with us.  My goal, of course, is to increase the numbers of species that call this spot home, particularly those species who belong here but might not have homes on the surrounding land anymore.

So how am I filling in these records?  I've started by going through all of my old photos and labeling them, adding new species to the lists as I find and identify them.  This won't be totally inclusive, but I figure I need to do it anyway, and it gives me a good starting point.  Since I currently have over 26,000 photos, it's taking me a while just to tackle this introductory step.  And, as you can see from above, I'm rediscovering an interesting variety of plants and animals that I'd frankly forgotten about.

Not surprisingly, I have lots and lots of photos that I've never really edited, sorted and identified.  After all, especially during the middle and end of the summer, it's not uncommon for me to take 50 or 100 photos a day;  editing all of those photos and identifying the species in them is very time consuming.  Most of these mid- and late-summer photos have never been examined closely.  My tendency is to look through the photos when I upload them, identify the really exciting ones and edit/identify/label those, then tell myself that I'll get back to the rest "later".  Well, "later" is finally here....

Bugguide.net has been a wonderful help with the insect identifications.  My photos aren't great, especially compared with the professional entomologists' photos, but where they can identify species, the folks who volunteer on that site have very kindly done so.  I try hard to identify those that I can, before I submit a photo for identification, but it's VERY time consuming.  I can almost always get down to order and sometimes to family, but getting down to genus, let alone species, requires clicking through thousands of photos.  I am learning a lot, though!

Right now I'm about 2 1/2 years into our sojourn here, photographically speaking.  In the database, I'm up to a little over 150 plant species, 70 insect species, and 30 vertebrate species.  The vertebrate species list is particularly low, since I have a yard list of over 100 bird species alone.  I also haven't started lists for spider species or arthropods other than insects, since I have no general knowledge in those areas...yet.  However, I intend to remedy those holes as soon as I possibly can.  Generally speaking, "I've only just begun...."  I'm looking forward to my next (re)discoveries!

A Local Biodiversity Study

One of the projects I've been aching to do for a long time is a simple species list of all the various plants and animals that I find on our 10 acres, preferably with notes as to when I've seen them, whether they have come in naturally or I've introduced them, whether they are native, and so forth.  For plants, I consider this a personal "Accession Record".  For animals?  Just a "Biodiversity Record", I guess.

I've tried several times to initiate this project, first on paper, then with an open source database, then on 3X5 index cards - but each time my platform became unwieldy quite rapidly.

I'm trying again, but this time I'm feeling much more optimistic:  I've finally spent the money to get Access, a database I've successfully used before to follow complicated lists of plant material, when I kept the worked on the plant sale team for Mobile Botanical Gardens.  It's going to take an incredibly long time to input 7 years of species data, but I'm going to keep plugging away at it to the best of my ability.  Who knows?  When I'm done, this might actually come in useful for some graduate student somewhere!

Right now I'm trying to decide if I want to include all life forms in one big database, with separate tables for plants, vertebrates, insects, etc.,  or if I want to have a separate database for each major category I plan to keep track of.  Any suggestions from those of you who have attempted something of this sort?

To make this database doubly useful, I'm going back through my photos to organize and edit them in conjunction with my species' lists.  That, in itself, is a huge project, but after transferring my data 3 full times over the summer (as I attempted to upgrade to a new computer and then dealt with my initial lemon) I've lost all of the organizational links to my photos and I have to recreate the photo organization system anyway.  It seems like a good time to weed out less than optimal photos, finalize species identifications as much as possible, and do a bit of basic coordination between the photos and the biodiversity database.

It's rather fun to be going back through my old photos so carefully.  I'm finding "gems" that I forgot I had seen in the yard, like this Cocklebur Weevil on hedge parsley.  I haven't seen any examples of this species recently and I had forgotten I had noted this one in the yard, about a year after we first moved in.

Do you keep a species list for your yard or garden?  If so, what do you keep track of?  I'd love to hear about other people's experience doing this, personally or professionally.  Maybe I can avoid any more costly, time-consuming mistakes!