Finding a place to spend the winter

Well, its that time of year again. The leaves are falling from the trees in the Northern hemisphere. Some of us are heading South for the winter and some of us are seeking shelter and preparing to hibernate.

Insects are getting ready for winter as well. Some insects overwinter in self-constructed shelters called cocoons.

This cocoon (above), contains a Green Lacewing pupa (Neuroptera: Chrysopidae). Pupa is the life stage between larva and adult during which some insects undergo complete metamorphosis. The Green Lacewing larva looks something like this:

They use those sickle shaped mouthparts to pierce the exoskeletons of their insect prey and suck their insides out. Once they are fully grown and ready to become adults they curl up into a tight ball and spin this cocoon.

The cocoon is made of silk, a material that is produced by most insects and serves a variety of purposes throughout their lives. Once the cocoon is complete, the larva transitions into the pupa stage. Since it is so late in the year, this lacewing will not emerge as an adult until next spring.
This is what a Green Lacewing adult looks like:

As you can see, they get their name from the lacy appearance of their wings.



These Brown Lacewings (Neuroptera: Hemerobiidae) are also getting ready for the winter.

They don't spin their cocoons nearly as densely as the Green Lacewings do so you can clearly see the pupa inside.

Brown lacewing larvae sometimes cover themselves in debris to camouflage themselves from predators. you can read more about this in my previous post, but here is what they look like:

Brown lacewing adults look pretty much like Green Lacewing adults except that they are brown and quite a bit smaller. 

Next spring as the temperatures start to warm, we'll start seeing both kinds of lacewing adults flying around as they search for places to lay their eggs. Hopefully enough of them will survive the winter to help us control those nasty aphids and scales in our gardens next year!

Familiar Jumpers!

I found this spider on our basement stairs last week.

She is a jumping spider (Salticidae), and a pretty large one. Here is a picture with my thumb to give you a sense of her size. My thumbnail is about a half of an inch (1.3 cm) long.

Jumping spiders don't build webs to trap prey like other spiders. They actively hunt prey and are capable of moving very quickly when necessary. Even though they don't spin webs, they still possess silk glands and they will trail a tiny thread of silk behind them as they hunt. This thread serves as a safety line should they lose their footing when pouncing on their prey.
Two of their eyes are very large and are oriented forward, which gives them better vision for hunting.

The two appendages under her eyes that look like a mustache are called palps. In females, they are mainly used for sensing the environment and manipulating food. Male spiders also use their palps for mating and courtship, so their palps are often larger and more noticeable. One of the clues that this spider is a female was that her palps are not enlarged at the tip. Also, the males of this species have an orange band of hairs underneath their eyes. Jumping spiders are one of the few spider families that possess color vision and the males will often have colorful markings on their faces that serve a purpose in courtship. This species is known as the Familiar Jumper (Platycryptus undatus).
Here is a link to a really great video of some other Familiar Jumpers.