Bug hunts in Arizona(Tucson) and Eastern Texas area

Before we start here is my friend (Christian Ludwig) who is bug hunting with me for this entire week, mainly looking for ants (i am afetr mantis). Also, it was a great pleasure meeting up with Peter and his wife too. My hunting trip actually started the second day as i was pretty sick the day we landed. I will continue the hunt pics on several posts due to pics limit and also my time limit

Starting from left, Christian, Peter's wife, Peter, and myself taken in front of the hotel lobby at Tucson, AZ.



Arizona grasshopper mantis (Yersiniops sp.) - adult male





Scarab beetle



More beetle



Nice butterfly



Arizona mantis - adult male



Hopper!



Ok that's all for now..... will share more pics when time permits I promise.

What about the pictures of local cuisine?

I did not know that Peter had such a nice looking gal for wife

Nice pics Yen! That grasshopper mantis is cool. Will make a good addition to bugfest.

Looks like fun! Hope you find more Yersiniops, it's a great species.

Have fun!

Kruszakus said:

What about the pictures of local cuisine?I did not know that Peter had such a nice looking gal for wife

Click to expand...

Now Peter is going to kick me out of this forum

Sorry Kruzakus i was there for bugs, not food But i have to say the restaurant in the hotel served delicious food

Rick said:

Nice pics Yen! That grasshopper mantis is cool. Will make a good addition to bugfest.

Click to expand...

Will send you the adult male no problem.

Andrew said:

Looks like fun! Hope you find more Yersiniops, it's a great species.

Click to expand...

Yes there are pretty cool. It was difficult to catch them as there were many grasshopper the same size as this species, and when disturb they jumped like grasshopper, got to have a good (and quick) eyes for spotting them. We caught 5 males and 2 females, all adult. I am not sure if both female were mated so i mated them again.

hibiscusmile said:

Have fun!

Click to expand...

Thanks

Well on the second day we have more luck on more insects. Caught few more AZ grasshopper mantis. Check out their hind leg, pretty similar to a grasshopper leg i have to say.





Also a fat female ground mantis..yay! If she didn't move it it is almost impossible to spot her.



Christian checking out some ant nest. I believed that was the honeypot ant nest he was checking out



A closer look at the nest... but where is the queen?!?!



Also found an ootheca. Hmmm.... the ooth looks like Phyllovates chlorophaea and Pseudovates arizonae ooth. But i am really hoping that this is something new, like some other Vates or Pseudovates sp. and hopefully it is not empty egg cage.



Scorpian.... not sure what species





Male Tarantula, quite a few of them.



To be continue.......

Some nice finds there mate

I remember watching a documentary with honeypot ants and they needed a JCB to get to the queens chamber

Haha...I showed my wife that photo and she was quick to mention that this was the last day of our trip out in the desert collecting bugs and she wasn't exactly expecting to be caught on film

Still, she did appreciate the compliment, Kruszakus!

The food in Tucson is not so great compared to what I'm used to up here in Oregon. Of course, maybe I wasn't hitting up the best restaurants. There was a little hole in the wall restaurant in Wilcox. I collected my first bug of the trip on a picnic table out back there. It was chasing one of the hundred flies that were buzzing around the tables. Strangely, the flies went away when the food was served. Probably not a good sign! My tacos looked better than Roxanne's mystery meat hamburger though. Oh, I also saw some dragonfly naiads in the water fountain and a few swept-up Xyloryctes beetles in a trash can (only because I looked, of course).

Oh your scorpion is a common Vaejovis. I probably saw a hundred of them with my blacklight. They call them 3 stripe or 3 lined scorpions, I think. I did manage to find some desert hairy scorps and a few others.

I'll post a few photos from the trip here too:

Photo 1: Tarantula crossing the road

Photo 2: Me in the Arizona desert

Photo 3: more eye candy for Kruszakus (silly hat we bought for our son) at Big Nose Kate's Saloon in Tombstone, Arizona

Photo 4: It's monsoon season in AZ, so that means flash floods. It ain't all sunny skies in August!

Photo 5: caterpillar larvae

Photo 6: Horsebean longhorn beetle

Gurd said:

Some nice finds there mate I remember watching a documentary with honeypot ants and they needed a JCB to get to the queens chamber

Click to expand...

Thanks Craig I wasn't serious when i said where the queen is With only little shovels in hand Christian will probably still need to dig in right now to get into the queen chamber!

Peter said:

Haha...I showed my wife that photo and she was quick to mention that this was the last day of our trip out in the desert collecting bugs and she wasn't exactly expecting to be caught on film Still, she did appreciate the compliment, Kruszakus!

The food in Tucson is not so great compared to what I'm used to up here in Oregon. Of course, maybe I wasn't hitting up the best restaurants. There was a little hole in the wall restaurant in Wilcox. I collected my first bug of the trip on a picnic table out back there. It was chasing one of the hundred flies that were buzzing around the tables. Strangely, the flies went away when the food was served. Probably not a good sign! My tacos looked better than Roxanne's mystery meat hamburger though. Oh, I also saw some dragonfly naiads in the water fountain and a few swept-up Xyloryctes beetles in a trash can (only because I looked, of course).

Oh your scorpion is a common Vaejovis. I probably saw a hundred of them with my blacklight. They call them 3 stripe or 3 lined scorpions, I think. I did manage to find some desert hairy scorps and a few others.

I'll post a few photos from the trip here too:

Photo 1: Tarantula crossing the road

Photo 2: Me in the Arizona desert

Photo 3: more eye candy for Kruszakus (silly hat we bought for our son) at Big Nose Kate's Saloon in Tombstone, Arizona

Photo 4: It's monsoon season in AZ, so that means flash floods. It ain't all sunny skies in August!

Photo 5: caterpillar larvae

Photo 6: Horsebean longhorn beetle

Click to expand...

Nice pics Peter. Thank you so much for taking care of Christian for me on our first day in Tucson. Thanks for the scorpian identification. Also i have donated some tarantulas you gave me, the museum wanna thank you too

Before moving to bug collection in Texas. Here are few more pics of some bugs found in Tucson.

Nice looking stick insect





Tiger beetle





Is this a velvet ant? It looks like some character from Disney :lol:





The ground mantis female produced an egg case in the container! Good chance the ootheca is fertile.





So i set up a cage for this lady



Also there was a huge sun spider, she will bite anything!



Still no luck for Christian to witness any ants mating ritual, he is keeping his finger cross and praying for rains, which is ants collector friends, but rain is not mantis collector friend B)

I still have a ton of photos to go through, but here's a fun one of Roxanne when we were within a few miles of the border of Mexico. Roxanne and I were hiking down a wash (dry creek bed) when we heard a car pull up near ours back on the road. I ran back to see if somebody might be messing with our car. It's unusual to hear other vehicles stopping on the side of the road in the middle of nowhere. But it was just Border Patrol..."keeping it safe". We had a good time talking about bugs as many of them aren't from Arizona, originally. They also shared some tips with us for being safe while collecting so close to the border. They catch border-crossers almost every day. I asked them if I could snap a few photos and they even turned on the lights for me

Interesting stuff Peter. We didn't get stop by any border patrol being far away from Mexico border, but have some local people (usually cyclists and joggers) curious enough to stop by asking what are we doing. I guess we are some bug freaks and wierdos for them :lol: but they are kind enough to take pics for us





THe room service lady almost scream when she saw the bugs in our room and told us not to let any of those loose



We went back to the place you brought Chrsitian on the first day Peter... Continental Rd.. I have to say that is a great spot for bugs!!



Prime area for bugs of all kinds



Some mantis collection on the second day.





One more immature female ground mantis (L. minor)



adult male ground mantis



Well there was no single queen ant for my friend Christian, but there is a great sign he might be lucky tomorrow...... ant collector greatest friend has arrived in Tucson!



Will Chrsitian hit jackpot tomorrow? To be continue.......

the scropion might be yellow fat tail

death stalkers tails are skinny with skinny claws

FYI anyone =P

Hope you find more mantids!

d0rk2dafullest said:

the scropion might be yellow fat taildeath stalkers tails are skinny with skinny claws

FYI anyone =P

Click to expand...

Yup. Small claw + big tail = poisonous sting! I don't want to mess with any scorpian.

I Like Mantis said:

Hope you find more mantids!

Click to expand...

Thanks. We found many kind of bugs beside mantids. At the end we have to release some bugs back as I ran out of luggage space <_<

Ok back to the queen ant hunt for Christian. On the last day, he did find around 20+ queen ants of leaf cutter ant (Acromyrmex versicolor?) and long leg ant (Aphaenogaster cocerele?) yay! So the rain a day before did help! and according to Christian these queens will easily cover the cost of this entire travel, or at least the flight ticket.... WOW! :blink:

Here checking out nest for long leg nest



Queen leaf cuter ant



Queen long leg ant



Those queen ants have started making hole on the ground after mating and ready to start a colony. By digging in it wouldn't take long to locate the queen. But sometimes we found something else.



Also some cool grasshopper



At the same time i found out that Yersiniops sp is pretty aggressive, believed cannibalism is common for this species. I was mating another pair again.



The next thing i know is the male has only a leg left



left with a fat female



Another pic of the ground mantis female



Hmmm.. what type of ant nest would this be?



So we are all happy leaving Tucson and head to Phoenix airport for the trip back to Houston.

Next to bug hunt in Houston area.....

YEAH!!! Welcome back to the hobby Yen!!!

Awesome pics, the queen leaf cutter ant looks really cool!

Remember to be safe wouldnt wanna get bitten or messed up with a centipede! =P

my next vacation destination is........

we don't find any of that in europe :angry:

pohchunyee said:

YEAH!!! Welcome back to the hobby Yen!!!

Click to expand...

Thanks Chun, although i am not 100% back.

d0rk2dafullest said:

Awesome pics, the queen leaf cutter ant looks really cool!Remember to be safe wouldnt wanna get bitten or messed up with a centipede! =P

Click to expand...

THe Texas leaf cutter (Atta Texana) ant queen is even larger, i would say 3 times larger than the Arizona leaf cutter ant! I am learning more about ants nowadyas

Yeah, that centipede wasn't a small one either. A good 5-6 inches

idolomantis said:

my next vacation destination is........we don't find any of that in europe :angry:

Click to expand...

You have many cool mantis in Europe too. Empusa sp can be found in most Western European country.

Ok, back to Houston now. We went to a park nearby my house. Just a small park with trees and low grasses. A good place for ants (Well don't want my German friend here to go home with nothing from Houston). However, we found no queen ants but other bugs (including mantis) instead.... hmmm talk about coincidence.

Jumping spider



Spider crab





Mantis!!! Thesprotia graminis nymph



Well we found interesting wasp-looking ant, pretty cool. THese two were fighting! Christian hopes he can find the queen for this species. It will make him very rich ha!



Found a small colony of ants inside a log, but not too interesting i guess as Christian decided to leave it



Hey found another mantis!! Another immature grass mantis



That's me checking out some bug, didn't realize i was in that pic till Chris passed me the photo



Grasshopper...mantis food!



Will share more photos from the bug hunt next.....

we never go to these countries.. lol. the most interesting i find here is waterbug