2011 Texas and Arizona summer collecting experience

[agent A]

very cool, that toad is so cute

the Saraccenia species you took a pic of might be S. leucophyllia (not sure if i spelled it right), the white-top pitcher plant,

i've had those for a while and they are personally my favorite pitcher plants, i miss mine

cool stagmomantis, mine are only like L5 and teeny tiny, but the pseudoharpax are subadult

so what happens with those ant colonies when they overcrowd the stick they live in? do they kick some of the ants out?

 

[gripen]

those hoppers are bad @$$!

 

[Precarious]

Wow! Love the green lynx and jumping spider. And the libbers and grasshoppers. Really beautiful.

 

[yen_saw]

very cool, that toad is so cute

the Saraccenia species you took a pic of might be S. leucophyllia (not sure if i spelled it right), the white-top pitcher plant,

i've had those for a while and they are personally my favorite pitcher plants, i miss mine

cool stagmomantis, mine are only like L5 and teeny tiny, but the pseudoharpax are subadult

so what happens with those ant colonies when they overcrowd the stick they live in? do they kick some of the ants out?

Thanks for the info.The canyon has plenty of hatched ooth on Mesquite tree, but i couldn't find any mantis but some other bugs.....

This metallic boring beetle was pretty cool

Plenty of mantis food....

Tarantula male

Several stick insects species spotted too

 

[minard734]

Sweet!

 

[yen_saw]

There were plenty of beetles spotted, such as this one, Stenaspis solitaria.

Acmaeodera rubronotata ??

Pics of the canyon

There was a giant swallowtail on the ground

Plenty of ant species too, just no mantis. I think this lizard is laughing at me....

So no mantis for me on the first day, although we only got the chance to visit the canyon for few hours. The next morning we went to Madera Canyon and saw some winged ants being attacked by another type of ants. That also means we were too late for nuptial flight bummer.... Apparently some Acromyrmex sp ants were performing nuptial flight earlier and Aphaenogaster sp ants were feasting on the left over.

But there were also sign that mated Acromyrmex queen just dug in.....

So time for Chris to dig in and find the buried queen.

 

[yen_saw]

There were plenty of fresh queen ant mounds. It was not difficult to dig in due to the sandy soil and rain from previous night. Soon Chris found some queen ants. Here is the Acromyrmex queen.

Aphaenogaster queen.

Queen ants kept in test tubes

I saw plenty of mantis egg cases, some were located near the ground

Some high up in the tree, as high as 10 ft above ground

Some on fence wireline

and multiple ooths too

All appear to be of Stagmomantis ooth, likely S. limbata, but couldn't find any mantis still. So i put my butterfly net to work, and finally found my first mantis. An adult male Yersiniops sphodronica or the long horned ground mantis. Staring right at me.

 

[yen_saw]

I continue to sweep along the knee high grasses and found more Yersiniops sphodronica, all in adult stage. However, i was surprise to catch few younger stage Stagmomantis nymphs. Probably drought on this part of the area has slowed down their growth too. Just like the one in Texas.

Something else spotted along the way

Cool looking yellow spider

Some of the queen ants in the test tube. Chris also tried to include sand in some test tubes.

You can see from this short clip the queen started to dig in even in the testube

http://s884.photobucket.com/albums/ac49/yen_saw2009/2011%20Christian%20Trip/Arizona/?action=view&current=M4H08473.mp4

We decided to visit Arivaca after that. Saw plenty of male tarantula crossing the road.

Hmmm..... looks like a spider I should avoid contact

And plenty of mating horse lubbers can be seen on the road. Yeah these were large enough to be spotted while driving.

To be continue.....

 

[ShieldMantid1997]

those mantids are cool, do you ever breed those? (Yersiniops sphodronica or the long horned ground mantis)

 

[agent A]

very awesome

are those circular holes in the ooths possibly from wasps?

 

[yen_saw]

those mantids are cool, do you ever breed those? (Yersiniops sphodronica or the long horned ground mantis)

Yes back in 2008. Breeding this species is not difficult, but raising L1 nymphs was a nightmare for me back then. Fruit fly was not accepted due to the ultra small front legs for the hatchling.

very awesome

are those circular holes in the ooths possibly from wasps?

yes those were holes made by parasitic wasp.Along the road to Arivaca there were plenty of beetles on the road side. Some will run away when appraoched. Like this large beetle.

Some will defend itself and holding firm to its position ready to attack

Flipping rocks and found these two harmless and cute narrowmouth toads

but not every insect lives underneath the rock was harmless.... fat tail, big stinger, small pincher..... better leave this scorpian alone

Arrived at a field in Arivaca and started to sweep. and found a mating pair of stick insect

Soon I found some Litanuetria minor and Yersiniops Sphodronica mantis. Here is a fat ground mantis L. minor.

Adult male L. minor.

 

[lunarstorm]

Awesome pics Yen, I wondered if you'd run into any scorpions. How many ooths and/or mantids did you keep from the adventure?

 

[yen_saw]

Awesome pics Yen, I wondered if you'd run into any scorpions. How many ooths and/or mantids did you keep from the adventure?

Thanks. I saw plenty of hatched oothecae so i didn't keep any. But i lost count on the number of mantis collected from this trip. :cowboy: Since we were late for the nuptial flight on previous day, we decided to visit the same place earlier. Especially when it was raining dogs and cats the previous night. It was all good when we saw some ants flying the next morning.

and saw plenty of winged ant wondering just outside the nest, ready to take the flight. It is Acromrymex species.

It didn't take very long before swarm appear.. yeah the pheromone is in the air!

Soon thousands swarmed the air. Hovering about 20 feet about the ground and performing nuptial flight. A pretty amazing sight for me.

Here is a short clip

http://s884.photobucket.com/albums/ac49/yen_saw2009/2011%20Christian%20Trip/Arizona/?action=view&current=M4H08512.mp4

Mating pair dropped to the ground, but will fly after separated. Standing underneath the swarm, it felt like raining ants. A pair dropped on my hand and continue to mate.

Here is another clip where you can see mating ants dropping to the ground and taking off to the air during the nuptial flight.

http://s884.photobucket.com/albums/ac49/yen_saw2009/2011%20Christian%20Trip/Arizona/?action=view&current=M4H08532.mp4

Load of mating ants on the ground

 

[yen_saw]

As usual, not every pairing ants survived in the wild. It is a dog eat dog world out there and some other species of ants (Aphaenogaster sp) seemed to anticipated this 'event' and starting to attack the mating pair on the ground.

Winged ants that show up late have no chance to fly. Mauled by swarm of ants from other species.

I let Chris busy collecting the queens and started to look for more mantis. Soon I found an adult female ground mantis.

There were plenty of Yersiniops around the area too.

Soon I developed the 'eye' for this species and collected plenty of them. In less than one hour i found about 9 adult females and dozen of males. Here is another Yersiniops if you can find it

To my surprise I also found a white velvet ant!!! What a contrast to the orange/red velvet ants i usually found in Texas.

Well there was a reason to celebrate so I had a good meal that day.

Lot more pics to post on that day....... stay tune!

 

[lunarstorm]

Whoa. The swarm of flying ants looks pretty wild, I've never seen anything like that before.

I noticed you said something akin to "here's a clip" on a few images. Are they supposed to be videos? If so, it's not working for me, everything you've posted thus far appears as an image.

 

[yen_saw]

Whoa. The swarm of flying ants looks pretty wild, I've never seen anything like that before.

I noticed you said something akin to "here's a clip" on a few images. Are they supposed to be videos? If so, it's not working for me, everything you've posted thus far appears as an image.

Thanks for letting me know. I put the direct link up instead. Hope it works this time. The image clip used to work on old forum format. I better go change other clips posted on the new format too.

 

[lunarstorm]

Cool, thanks, that worked.

Your shot of the hidden Yersinops ("Here is another Yersiniops if you can find it") is devious...

Potential spoiler, for those that haven't found it yet, don't click this.

Spoiler

I *think* it's just right of center?

 

[yen_saw]

Cool, thanks, that worked.

Your shot of the hidden Yersinops ("Here is another Yersiniops if you can find it") is devious...

Potential spoiler, for those that haven't found it yet, don't click this.

:clap: Good spot.... mind joining me for the next bug hunt? ^_^ Continue to stay at Box Canyon/Madera Canyon area, at this point i was just taking picture of insects as I ran out of containers. Plenty of pairing insects - mantis food.

A nice size cactus beetle.

I have never seen that many stick insects in Madera Canyon.

This is a strange one. The exoskeleton of this insect must be thick as passing ant appeared to ignore it.

A surprise sunspider found hiding underneath a rock.

But most of the time it was the scorpians that hid underneath logs or rocks.

and sure enough there were more mantis spotted

So Chris had a good collection that day

It wasn't too bad for me as well

 

[agent A]

i have a question about litaneutra

can L1 nymphs handle D.melanogaster?

just curious, maybe 1 day i'll rear them

 

[yen_saw]

i have a question about litaneutra

can L1 nymphs handle D.melanogaster?

just curious, maybe 1 day i'll rear them

L1 Litanuetria minor or Yersiniops sphodronical need something smaller like springtail.Walking around the lighting area around the hotel, I found some nice insects

Also spotted this ootheca on the building wall. Looks like it belongs to Litanuetria

Feeding and observing some collected mantis

Morning photo from the back of the hotel

Ants has already been active in the early morning

Spotted this poor frog on my way to breakfast