Month: October 2016

This is Bamboo. If I had known how difficult it was going to be to identify I would have collected a few more identifying parameters beyond the picture. I have narrowed it down to the genus Phyllostachys but to get more specific than that I will need to get a DBH tape and take a closer look at the rhizomes.  Because much of the bamboo looks similar, growth from the root can help determine the exact species. Although I have a picture of the stem and lanced leaves (typical of Phyllostachys) I do not have a picture of the roots, I didn’t even take a look at them.  I was surprised to see the diversity of bamboo that grows in Texas, although most of the bamboo is planted for it’s looks and sometime used instead of a privacy fence, most of it is invasive and can do damage to wetlands and marshes.

To see the iNaturalist post click here

 

This week I saw a garter snake (Thamnophis) while I was walking near a creek. Although this is a common species, I didn’t know much about them, so here are some facts I learned: bullfrogs are one of their natural predators; they’re collected for the pet trade; they almost exclusively utilize habitat near a water source; they hibernate and often in a communal setting in sites called “hibernacula”; lastly, despite belief to the contrary, they are actually venomous, just not enough to kill a human.

Where I grew up in New York, if you were a kid who liked to play outdoors, you were aware of Poison Ivy.  Either you or someone you knew had dealt with the itchy rash symptoms that come from accidentally brushing into it.  Poison Ivy is the weed that no one wants, not that anyone wants weeds on their property.  There is a common rhyme to help identify and avoid an encounter, ‘leaflets of three, let it be”. Unfortunately it is native throughout the United States and much of Southern Canada in variety of habitats including wet or dry woodlands, thicket valleys, clearings, fencerows, roadsides, and waste grounds.  It can thrive in disturbed areas. It mainly appears as a bushy, erect or trailing shrub or as a woody climbing vine. The rhyme comes from the stems which have leaflets of three that are smoothed or toothed, rounded or pointed, glossy or dull.

All the parts of the plant contain a toxin plant oil called urushiol which can cause significant short and long lasting skin irritations (allergic dermatitis) in most human beings.  The infections can occur from direct contact with the plant, indirect contact, or from breathing smoke from a fire of the plant material. Luckily some humans are immune, and I am one of them!

On another walk around the pond near my work in Round Rock, I discovered these bright little flowers along side of the forested region of the park. The Sunflower Goldeneye (Viguiera dentata) is a 3-6 ft., open, bushy, many-branched plant that tends to grow in colonies. Its leaves are narrow and its numerous yellow, 1 1/2 in., daisy-like flowers appear at the tips of long, slender, leafless stalks.

Goldeneye is an extremely drought-tolerant plant and it’s distribution is from Central TX to AZ, through Mexico to Central America and Cuba. It is used as an ornamental because of it’s showy flowers. Wildlife such as nectar-bees, butterflies, and seeds-granivorous birds use this plant in many ways.
It is known as a larval host for bordered patch butterfly such as the Cassius Blue butterfly.

Find my iNaturalist post here.

Source: http://www.wildflower.org/plants/result.php?id_plant=VIDE3

This butterfly was flying around a patch of flowers nearby the mailroom as I went to get the mail. I put my observation on iNaturalist in the “Butterflies and Moths” category first, then I misnamed it the “Orange Sulphur.” Luckily someone helped me to get the proper ID of Phoebis sennae, or Cloudless Sulphur. This butterfly is widespread throughout the U.S., especially in the southern states, and can even be seen into Canada and South America, but it is very rarely seen in the northwestern states.

Males and females look slightly different. The male has a lemon yellow upper surface with no markings. Males are also seasonally dimorphic; their winter forms are larger and have darker markings ventrally. The female is yellow or white with irregular brown or black markings and the upper forewing has a dark spot in the cell. In both sexes, there are two silver spots in the lower surface of the hindwing. With these differences, I think the one I photographed was a female. Larvae are green with yellow lateral lines and transverse bands of blue spots or yellow with black transverse bands. Whether the larvae are green or yellow depends on what they feed on; if they eat green leaves, they will be green and if they eat yellow blooms they will be yellow. Caterpillar host plants are Cassia/Senna plants, of the pea family; these plants are considered weeds and are actually poisonous. Adults are attracted to purple, red, and orange flowers with long tubes.

When these butterflies are breeding, they can be found in disturbed open areas where they can find their host plants and nectar, such as parks, beaches, yards, gardens, road edges, and abandoned fields, but when migrating, they can be found in all kinds of habitats. They migrate south in the fall, to avoid frigid temperatures in the north in the winter, and then they fly back north in the spring.

My iNaturalist post can be found here.

Sources:

http://www.butterfliesandmoths.org/species/Phoebis-sennae

http://entnemdept.ufl.edu/creatures/bfly/bfly2/cloudless_sulphur.htm

http://www.butterfly-fun-facts.com/butterfly-species/butterflies-a-e/cloudless-sulphur-butterfly-phoebis-sennae/

 

This past Friday, my research group went out to Wild Basin to set out some more of our iButtons. We had to go off trail to get to Grid points 2, 5, & 8 and while on our way to the first grid point we heard something moving and making its way to us through the landscape. Meagen and I were scared it was a snake, but it turned out to be the Greater Roadrunner! They are a pretty fascinating species from what I have read. They have a very distinctive shape with long legs, a long neck and a long straight tail. Their body structure is what gives them their speed, leaning over parallel to the ground. They can easily out run any human but are weak fliers. They are found in hot shrubby regions and range from Southwestern United States to Mexico. They hunt lizards, small mammals and birds, but have been known to kill rattlesnakes. They kind of blend into the background of the pictures but it was an awesome observation!

My iNaturalist post can be found here.

In honor of Halloween, I’ve decided to write about creepy crawlies. Orb weaver’s webs are popular design that have been used for Halloween spider web decorations. There is a black-and-yellow garden spider (or yellow garden orb-weaver, golden orb-weaver) that made its home in the bush on the sidewalk leading to SEU. Since I couldn’t take a picture of head of spider, it is covered in short and silver hair. This spider is female because of it’s size; male is only half of the female’s size. Also, only female spiders that create web, male spiders usually don’t create webs and they always wander in search for female spider to mate with.

The web has zig-zag pattern on the web and I was not sure what that is for. It is called stabilimenta and the purpose of it is not determined yet. It had been assumed that it is for keeping birds from flying through the web, increase stability of the web, or capturing the prey (by camouflaging the bright spider). Other suspected that male spiders would make their own zig-zag pattern near or on outer part of the female spider’s web and court the female spider by making vibration with their zig-zag lines.

This spider is active during day and they will capture prey and eat during the day. The prey ranges from grasshoppers, moths, wasps, and mosquitoes. Larger orb weavers (not this species, but in same Argiope genus) had been observed eating small frogs or hummingbirds if they got caught in web. Orb weaver spiders also eat parts its own web and replace with new silk everyday, it is suspected that eating web because it probably have small insects.

My iNaturalist can be found here.

I took a video on other day of the spider eating its prey.

While walking the Lady Bird Trail, I came across quite a few of these Yaupon Holly Trees. They are native to central Texas among a few other places. They are often grown in residential landscapes and make great ornamental twigs around the holiday seasons. The leaves and twigs contain caffeine, which American Indians used to drink in homemade teas. You must have a male and female plant to have berries

 

Source: http://www.wildflower.org/plants/result.php?id_plant=ILVO

iNaturalist Observation: http://www.inaturalist.org/observations/4391724

A rescued evening bat was observed in the Cherrywood neighborhood in east Austin. Dianne Odegard and Lee Mackenzie rescue injured and orphaned bats in their home and backyard. Evening bats like to live inside trees, and this particular evening bat makes its home inside a log with quite a history. This piece of wood belonged to a tree which was cut down and run through a log splitter–when this particular piece was split, it was found to be hollow, with a completely unharmed evening bat (not the same bat as the one pictured) nestled inside! The bat was then brought to Dianne and Lee to be rehabbed, and the wood kept as a home for its current inhabitant. You can see where the split wood was hinged to create a come, and the bat is hungrily munching on a mealworm.

My iNaturalist observation can be found here.

During a hike on the greenbelt this weekend, I saw some pretty yellow flowers that I thought would be great for the biodiversity post this week. Then, I saw bees surrounding the flowers so naturally I tried to get photos of them instead. Of course it wasn’t pleasant standing in the middle of a swarm of bees but I did it for the blog! After spending most of this morning looking at bee identification websites, I have come to the conclusion that these were honeybees (could be wrong), scientifically known as Apis mellifera.  

Honeybees are generally divided into three types: workers, the queen, and male bees which are called drones. Workers are the only bees most people ever see. Like ants, they are females that are not sexually developed. They have many jobs which include foraging for food, such as nectar and pollen from flowers as seen in the photo, building and protecting the hive, cleaning, circulating the air by beating their wings, and many other social functions. The queen’s only job is to have babies, but she also regulates the activities of the hive by producing chemical to guide behavior. There is only one queen per hive, and when she dies, a worker female in the colony is fed a special elixir which allows her to be a fertile queen. Males, or drones, live in the hive during the spring and summer but are expelled during winter months while the hive goes into lean survival mode. During this time, the hive lives on stored honey and pollen and cluster into a ball to conserve warmth. Honeybee hives have been providing humans with honey and beeswax for many years, spawning a large beekeeping industry, but many still exist in the wild.

You can find my iNaturalist post here.

References

http://animals.nationalgeographic.com/animals/bugs/honeybee/