Picket or it won't get better

Fun on the picket line this afternoon. Great weather for it.

More flies

I had a closer look at the blowflies on the window sill. Turns out that there were two species, both native. A common brown blowfly (Calliphora stygia) was joined by a lesser brown blowfly (C. augur). As you can see from the top picture, the two species are very similar but C. augur is distinguished by a steel blue patch on the abdomen.




Compare the photos of C. augur above with the images of C. stygia below.





Whereas C. stygia gets in early to lay its eggs, Calliphora augur can afford to be a little more relaxed. It doesn't waste time with eggs but produces young already at the maggot stage.

As annoying as they are, I can't help feeling a little bit impressed by flies. I understand if I'm alone in that.

Dropping in

I've made a few mistakes when it comes to this tiny garden. This Hakea was a particularly silly one because it seems to be made entirely of barbed wire. It will sort out the level of commitment of burglars though. If they can make it through the Hakea, they probably deserve to keep whatever they can find in the kitchen.

Anyway, the bush is in flower at the moment. Despite its profuse blossoms, the birds don't seem to be all that interested — they prefer the paperbark in the street — but the insects think it's great. So I went out with my camera this afternoon to take photos of its visitors. Unfortunately, the needles not only keep away would-be burglars but they make it impossible for me to get close enough for decent pics. I held up the camera and hoped for the best.




This bird-dropping spider (Celaenia) obviously regards the Hakea as a good place to raise her spiderlings . Each of these egg cases contains about 200 eggs, so this garden will soon be crawling with infant spiders. Not good news for arachnophobes and moths. But exciting for me.





Given their common name for their resemblance to bird poo, these spiders rely on camouflage to keep them safe from predators. They often sit in exposed places, such as on the cluster of egg cases, during the day. Birds overlook them.

Although they belong to the orb weaver family Araneidae, they don't build webs to snare prey. Instead, they use chemical attractants to lure moths. At night, they release scents that resemble the pheromones of female moths. Male moths follow the perfume trail and get more than they bargained for when they reach its source.

Over the next few nights, I'll go out with the camera and torch to see what's happening. I probably won't get a picture of a feeding spider but may get a visit from the local constabulary.

The flies are back in town

You know that summer's on its way when the buzz of blowflies fills the air.

Because it is active at lower temperatures than other flies, the native blowie Calliphora stygia is one of the first species to make its presence felt around house and garden. Calliphorids lay their eggs on all types of decaying matter — they are especially fond of corpses, visiting early and often — after which they wander over food, crockery and kitchen bench tops.

This might be why they are so fastidious when it comes to hygiene. Who know what was on that plate?

Calliphora stygia is also responsible for fly strike on sheep. Although it doesn't appear to initiate the problem, it certainly takes advantage of damage done by other species. Fortunately, there aren't many sheep around here.

Fly identification is a pain in the neck for the non-specialists (ie almost everybody I know). Calliphorids are calyptrate flies — each wing has a lobe (calypter) at the base that covers the haltere on its side. Three groups of large calyptrate flies regularly pop into gardens: Calliphoridae, Tachinidae (March or horse flies) and Sarcophagidae (flesh flies). The first two can be tricky to tell apart. If you can get close enough, you can separate them on their antennae. In calliphorids, the aristae are feathery (plumose), whereas in Tachinidae, they're not. Usually. But there are exceptions.

I said fly identification was a pain in the neck.

The insect people at CSIRO Entomology have put together a wonderful interactive atlas of fly anatomy to assist with working out which bit is which. Recommended for those with broadband.

The antennae are the structures projecting from the front of the face between the eyes. Each antenna is made up of several elements, of which two are the most obvious — the bulky flagellomere 1 and thread-like arista. In calliphorids, the arista is feathery. (See images below for a clearer view.)







The end.

Bugs on the hop

Hop bushes (Dodonea viscosa) are doing their thing at the moment. Although not one of our more spectacular native plants, they have a certain charm.

Ground shield bugs (Choerocoris paganus) like them too. They feed on seeds as they develop. When disturbed, the bugs usually drop to the ground and scuttle away but these two were obviously preoccupied.




It's easy to mistake shield bugs (family Scutelleridae) for beetles. In most bugs the scutellum is a small triangular plate that sits between the wings. You can see it clearly in this picture of harlequin bugs (Dindymus versicolor). It's nothing to write home about. But in scutellerids, it is greatly expanded, often covering the wings. This gives them a beetle-ish look.

A couple of earlier posts here and here give pointers to distinguishing between bugs and beetles.

Moon face

Venus (left), Jupiter (right) and the crescent moon (work it out) in a smiley face gathering this evening ...



... and tonight.



Close up.

____

Top: 300 mm, f 4.something, 1/5 sec on wobbly tripod, not cropped
Middle: 60 mm, f 2.8, 1/50 sec in wobbly hands, cropped
Bottom: 300 mm, f 4.8 (possibly), 1/80 sec, hand held, propped against the door, cropped.

All you need to know about Christmas

Pinched from Russell T Davies & Benjamin Cook's Dr Who: The Writer's Tale. Posted here for no other reason than it made me smile.




Christmas Eve, 2008: Aboard the White Light Company's starship Titanic, guests gather around Mr Copper for last minute instructions before they are teleported to Earth.

MR COPPER

To repeat, I am Mr Bayldon Copper, ship's historian, and I will be taking you to Old London Town. The basic facts: Human beings worship the great god Santa. A creature with fearsome claws. And his wife, Mary. Every Christmas Eve, the people of Earth go to war with the country of Turkey. Then they eat the people of Turkey for Christmas dinner. Like savages!

THE DOCTOR

Excuse me, sorry, but … where did you get this from?

MR COPPER

I have a degree in Earthonomics.

THE DOCTOR

From where?

MR COPPER

Mrs Golightly's Happy Travelling University and Hotel.

THE DOCTOR

Can't argue with that.

The editor strikes back

Driven to distraction by (apparently) falling standards, associate editor Simon Heffer of The Daily Telegraph sent a memo to the newspaper's staff. The Guardian, known for the occasional typo*, picked up his email and shared it with the world. Here's a snippet.

I have no idea what Heffer sounds like but when I read this all I can hear is Stephen Fry.

Dear Colleagues

I have exhorted you all to read carefully what you write. I think some of you are now doing this, but not always thinking about what it is that you read. This can be the only explanation for this week's worst horror (and, sadly, there is some competition). We ran a story in Tuesday's paper about a farmer's wife who died of a heart attack after a thief stole diesel from her farm. This unfortunate lady was called Mrs Dove. Her son is called Michael Dove. In the story he became Michael Gove; who happens to be the Conservative spokesman on schools. You might think this could hardly get worse. I fear it could, and did.

...

There have been so many literals this week that I suspect some of you either never could spell, or have given up trying. Perhaps my favourite was "hocky mom", followed by "plumb compote" (bring on the lead poisoning). One reader, having spotted the words "Chrsitmas" and "adminsitration" in the same story wondered whether our newsroom was now being run by "mnokeys". While it is good to provide the customers with amusement, it should be intentional. Grammar remains a treacherous slope. There is still a difficulty with conjugating the verb "to drink". Be in no doubt: the beer was drunk, but the man drank the beer. Page 6 of our modest but robust little style book contains a description of the difference between "may" and "might". They are not interchangeable, oddly enough. Do feel free to have a look at it.

_______
* a.k.a. The Grauniad

Thistle do me

Given that I'm still tethered to the computer — and probably will be until the end of the year — I've had to confine my nature study to the garden. And that's rapidly turning into a monoculture of sow thistle. I could blame the constant seeding from the laneway and vacant block next door but it might also ... possibly ... have its origins in the disgraceful tangle of weeds along the fence.




I was standing on the back step, looking at the appalling mess and considering taking action against the invasion, when I noticed just how many visitors were dropping in on the weeds. The paperbark in the street might be loaded with blossoms but the insects ignored it in favour of the little yellow flowers on the thistles. Maybe it was the difference in pollen production. Maybe it was the army of wattlebirds in the tree. Whatever the reason, the thistles were attracting all sorts of insects and the tree wasn't.

Of course, the moment I got out the camera a) the wind picked up and whipped the plants around and b) every insect fluttered for cover. I could regale you with tales of the Ones That Got Away but you'd never believe them. So here's what I did catch.


From idle observation, I think at least three species of hoverfly pop into the garden. Although adults are mostly pollen and nectar feeders, larvae are predators of aphids and other small insects. Normally, the thistles are covered in juicy little aphids. (Swarms of them cluster on the stems just below the leaves.) But the plants are completely aphid-free. Not an aphid in sight. Surely the hoverfly larvae haven't cleaned up every last one of them? Is it worth keeping a thistle patch to see whether the aphids and hoverflies return?


Other flies enjoy the pollen. I'm not sure what type of fly this is — other than an unco-ordinated one. It did love roaming around the stamens.


Native bees gather pollen from the flowers. (This isn't bad photography, by the way. They are naturally out of focus. Rather like the hoverflies.) Halictids tuck their pollen haul away under their tummies. You might be able to make out a rim of gold along the abdomen of this bee.


And there's always room for one more thrips.

Okay, I'm back!

Finished the book manuscript on Monday. Haven't had time to celebrate yet. Too much going on at work with exam and assignment marking, endless meetings, stupid bloody training sessions and games of Bullshit Bingo played using the global emails as a source. And then there's the threat of retrenchment --- they'll let us know on 8 December who's "excess to requirements". What happens then? Check out the screen caps below to find out …

Awesome invertebrates

I know. Aren't they all?

Deep Sea News has compiled a list of the Best 27 Deep Sea Species. It includes all manner of weird and wonderful critters —the armour-plated scaly-foot snail, the … ahem … hairy vent snail, carnivorous sea squirts, carnivorous sponges, worms that look like a pig's arse, worms that eat bones, the giant deep sea isopod (Bathynomus*) ... Oh, yeah, and some fish too, if you like looking at vertebrates.

Check out the top two here and here. The post on #3 has a list of species 4 to 27.

Enjoy!

_____

* It should be Bath-enormous. An opportunity missed there. Along with the recently-described octopus Wunderpus, for which I suggested the name Glamourpus. Not that anyone asked my opinion but I gave it anyway, being generous like that. (You can download the Wunderpus paper from Molluscan Research. 804 KB)

Mucky ducks

You'd think that Dreamworld could afford a proof-reader ...

The Loom of Life

I've been meaning to write a review of this for a while

There are stacks of books all over my house. They colonise bare surfaces under their own volition. (Or possibly stuck to the legs of waterfowl*. Both ways are equally plausible.)

If I plotted the rate at which those books arrive on my coffee table and the rate at which they are read and shelved, I'm sure the results would be pretty close to Robert MacArthur and Ed Wilson's graph of their equilibrium model of island biogeography. You know the one, with the curves representing immigraton and …

If you aren't familiar with their graph, then I have just the book for you. (And even if you are familiar with it, there's still plenty to read in this.) It's right here on my desk, about to shift from the unread to read pile. The Loom of Life: Unravelling Ecosystems is an introduction to ecology. It's not a text book. Not in the strictest sense. But it is an excellent primer for anyone interested in getting a grip on this vast subject.

Evolutionary biologist Menno Schilthuizen writes with great clarity and humour. He illustrates his topics — food webs, niches, guilds, biodiversity and so on — with fascinating examples. This is one of my favourites: Have you heard of Movile Cave in Romania? I hadn't. Discovered in 1986 by geologists who were charged with the job of finding a location for Ceaucescu's new power station, the cavern turned out to be a wholly self-contained ecosystem, sealed off from the rest of the world by almost twenty metres of solid limestone and a shedload of clay.

In this enclosed world-ette, bacteria play the role taken on by plants at the surface — transforming inorganic carbon into organic molecules within their cells. (Where it becomes available as nosh for those who can't manufacture their own food.) For plants, the carbon comes from carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and the energy from sunlight. For the Movile bacteria, carbon comes from dissolved limestone in the cave's pools and the energy from the toxic chemical hydrogen sulphide. (It's a weird world-ette. Even weirder than hydrothermal vents and cold seeps in the ocean. No offfence intended, Deep Sea News.) These carbon-crunching, rotten-egg gas-munching bacteria form the basis of the food chain in the self-sufficient cave ecosystem — and provide an intriguing introduction to energy flow, niches and the whole ecological kit and kaboodle.

Alongside these vignettes are character sketches of ecologists involved in unravelling ecosystems. (At least, in mapping their patterns.) The chapter on island biogeography (In Splendid Isolation), which stars Wilson, MacArthur and Daniel Simberloff is a gem. Even though I can't believe they haven't turned their gargantuan brains towards the science of biblioecology.

I enjoyed it. It's informative. It's entertaining. It has shameless puns. What more could you ask of a book on ecology?

Schilthuizen, M. (2008) The Loom of Life: Unravelling Ecosystems. Springer.

* Apologies if I've used that joke before.

I and the Bird #87

The Halloween edition of I and the Bird is up at the Ecobirder.

Not much happening here.

Exams are about to start. I'm marking undergraduate essays and honours theses. My diary is filled with meetings and mandatory training sessions for …. stuff*. Stuff that will all be irrelevant soon because we're pretty sure our course is going to be cut. Again. And if it is, we'll be declared 'excess to requirements'. We expect our letters some time before Christmas.

At home, I'm still working on the book manuscript. More about that when it's finished, which should be soon. That's scheduled for publication in mid-2009. I'm also putting together the plates for a major taxonomic monograph. (Someone else's. I've just about given up on my own research for the moment. I'll probably have plenty of time to pursue my snaily interests soon but no resources. Oh well, you win some. You lose all of the others.)

So, it's still shoulder to the wheel etc etc. You know the story.

I'm going stir crazy. I need another road trip.

______

* Yes, I've been paying attention. They send me emails. I put the information onto my calendar. Then I forget about it. Works for me.

Spring at the Snail Shell

For the past few weeks, I've been stuck at home, at work or in the car going between home and work. I know what season it is because the Spring Racing Carnival is on at Flemington (a long stroll or short drive along Ballarat Road from my house). There are also some seasonal clues in the garden. Here's what's blooming at the Snail Shell this week. (Not including the weeds.) This is what's keeping me sane …

Mint bush (Prostanthera)

Closer …

Pollinator's view

Fan flower (Scaevola aemula)

And again

Mt Blackwood 'holly' (Graptophyllum ilicifolium) about to flower

Close up

Yes, it really is that colour. Stunning, ain't it?

Zooborns

If you're having a bad day, Zooborns will change all that*. It's a screenful of cuteness.

_______

*Disclaimer: May not actually change your day.

I and the Bird #86

The latest edition of I and the Bird, the blog carnival with feathers, is up at the Drinking Bird.

Leaf miners emerge

I didn't think they would make it through pupation, considering I had so rudely uprooted their homes, but the plastic bag is full of dried up Sonchus and active little flies. (And they really are little — less than 2mm body length.) I worked through the Lucid key and confirmed the original identification. More or less. Unfortunately, the two introduced species of Chromatomyia are indistinguishable from one another on external features, so I'll have to be satisfied with an either/or ID.



Lest you think that putting a name to these minute beasts was a matter of great ability I should let you know that it was done using two attributes — the pupation site (within the mine) and colour of the third antennal segment (black). Given the host plant, identification was pretty straightforward. Entomological skillz: I do not haz dem.

Position of third antennal segments (arrow)

Okay. That's one fly down and only another gazillion to go. I was better off with the bivalves.

(That's not an ex-fly, by the way. I stuck it in the fridge to slow it down, but that didn't have an effect, so I put it in the freezer. That worked. For a few minutes. Then the fly was moving around as if nothing had happened.)

Still alive ...

... but panicking because I've got an awful lot of work to get through over the next few days.

In between all the writing (and procrastinating) and illustrating and lecturing and completing paper-work and counselling students and swearing at the global emails and face-palming at their contents, I'm still managing to do the rounds of my favourite blogs — even if I'm not contributing to my own. I'll get back to that soon. I promise.

I have a backlog of books to get through too. My evolutionary biologist friend Menno Schilthuizen sent me a copy of his latest work, The Loom of Life, which has gone straight to the top of the pile. I'll review it here. It's the wittiest ecology text I've ever read and I wish I'd looked at it before I gave my community ecology lectures this year. I would have stolen all the one-liners and passed them off as my own.

... I have presented the pyramid as made up of flat polished layers: primary consumers eat only producers and nothing else; secondary consumers only eat members of the primary layer and never touch a plant. Yet nature is not so neat: omnivores get their energy at several different trophic levels and it is sometimes a Clintonian judgment call whether a species has trophic relations with another species if it only occasionally consumes it.