By Popular Demand: The Creepy-Crawly Post!

So as everyone who reads this blog knows, the Watcher-Family-Unit had an outstanding vacation last month in Costa Rica. I blogged about the amazing mammals, birds and plants we saw down there, but unfortunately, none of those posts was a good place to blog about the innumerable Creepy-Crawlies we encountered on our trip. And so I’m belatedly doing this Special Bonus Post to give equal time to the various things we saw that slither, scuttle and/or sting.

But first, I must define the term Creepy-Crawly. For purposes of this post, to be a Creepy-Crawly, a creature must meet 1 or more of these 4 strict scientific and highly technical criteria:

1- It’s an invertebrate

2- It’s a reptile

3- It’s something that can sting, inject venom, harm, cause pain to, or otherwise make miserable a human being.

4- It’s something that, if your kid sister found it her bed, she would Totally Freak Out.

I recognize that this list is a bit broad (and in fact as I review it, I realize that technically my first wife would qualify*) but hey, it’s good enough.

*Meets criteria 3 & 4.

There honestly wasn’t a single day of our vacation that we didn’t encounter at least one exciting Creepy-Crawly. On the very first day, on our drive down to Quepos, we hit a home run with the kids by stopping at the bridge over the Rio Tarcoles, probably the best-known Crocodile-watching spot in all of CR. For years, tourists have stopped, watched, and (illegally) fed the several dozen Crocodiles that congregate under the bridge. Here’s a short video of another tourist dropping a road-killed Boa Constrictor into the Croc-infested waters below.

Side Note: Yes, even the road-kill in Costa Rica is exciting; that really was a Boa he dropped.

Crocodiles, Alligators and Caimans

The order Crocodilia has been around for more than 80 million years, and includes 3 families. The first is Gavalidae, which includes only 2 species, Gharials and False Gharials, native to Malaysia and India respectively.

The second is Alligatoridae, and this includes Alligators and Caimans. Alligators are what you’re likeliest to see in Florida. Though there used to be dozens of different species, there are only 2 species today, the American Alligator, Alligator mississippiensis, and the Chinese Alligator, Alligator sinensis. Alligators are the only crocodilians whose upper jaws are bigger than the lower jaws, and therefore completely cover the lower teeth when the mouth is closed. So if the mouth is closed and you see lower teeth, it’s not an Alligator. A. mississippiensis is native to the Gulf Coast/Florida and doesn’t make it down to Costa Rica.

Caimans are a bit smaller than most Crocs and Alligators, generally no more than 2.5 meters in length. There are 6 species, all native to South America. One, the Spectacled Caiman, Caiman crocodilus, makes it up into Central America and Costa Rica. Caimans were on Bird Whisperer’s “Target List”, and we looked hard for them, but to no avail.

The third family is Crocodiles. There are over a dozen species of Crocodile, spread across Asia, Africa, North & South America and Australia, and these include the biggest, meanest and most dangerous Crocodilians. The one found in CR is the American Crocodile, Crocodylus acutus. C. acutus grows up to 6 meters in length, and can swim up to 20 mph. Attacks on humans are unusual, but not all that rare. (Our guide in Quepos knew a fellow who’d lost a leg in an attack last year.) Crocodiles are generally more territorial, larger, and likelier to attack humans than Alligators. But (thankfully) the Crocs likeliest to attack humans are the Saltwater and Nile Crocodiles, found only in the Old World. Crocs are of course a regular threat to dogs in CR; as we returned from a Mangrove tour, a dog scampered among the reeds along the bank, chasing something. I overheard our guide say to the boatman, “No dura tres dias mas…” (“He won’t last another 3 days…”)

It’s one thing to see Crocodiles from the safety of a bridge; it’s another to find them lurking in the mangroves. Check out this shot on the right, and then see if you can find the one hidden in the pic below on the left.

2 other interesting differences between Alligators and Crocodiles: Alligators tolerate cold water (down into the 40’s F) far better than Crocodiles, which is why Alligators have done so well in the Southeast. But Crocodiles handle salt water better than alligators, which is why they’ve managed to colonize a number of Caribbean islands. In fact it’s thought that the small population of Crocodiles in Florida (~1200 individuals) arrived by island-hopping from Cuba during a previous ice age (when sea levels were lower.)

Spiders!

A few hours after our stop at the bridge, we arrived at the Blue Banyan Inn. As we were walking past the lobby/pavilion on the way to our cabina, a glint of glittering gold caught my eye. It was a spider web, a huge web, maybe 4 feet across, with thick, well-defined strands that caught and reflected the afternoon sun. And in the center of it was the most stunning, beautiful spider I’d ever seen- a Golden Orb Spider, Nephila clavipes.

There are 2 creepy things about Golden Orb Spiders. First is its size: about 4-5” in leg-span, and the abdomen alone is between 1” and 1.5”. The females are way bigger than the males. In fact in this pic- get this- I got the female and the male. Despite their size, they’re not particularly dangerous; though their venom contains neurotoxins chemically similar to those in Black Widow venom, they’re far less powerful, and the bite is usually no worse than a bee sting. (For a description of the neurotoxins in Black Widow venom, see this post.)

The 2^nd creepy thing is the web- it’s tough. After we settled into our room and had a swim, I went for a run. The old 4WD trail I was running on quickly deteriorated into a partially-overgrown jungle track (looking like pic on right), but I persevered. (Probably not my brightest move, as we’ll see when we get to snakes.) A few dozen yards later I felt a sharp yank across my thighs, as though I’d hit a trip wire. Quickly looking around, I saw a Golden Orb female scuttling up a broken web-strand and into the brush. Though the web gave way immediately to a running 175 lb human, it was the strongest spider-web I’ve ever felt. (Supposedly pre-Columbian Americans used them for fishing lines.)

The distinctive yellow tint of the web is caused by a combination of 4 compounds, and is thought to serve 1 or 2 possible functions. The first is camouflage in jungle brush; the second is to attract bees, which are often caught and consumed by the spiders. We saw plenty of Golden Orb Spiders in and around Quepos and Manuel Antonio, but none in the high country. “Golden Orb” BTW, refers to N. clavipes’ web, not her abdomen.

The lowland coastal jungles had many other interesting insects. One of the fascinating things about ants and termites in the neotropics is that they often build their nests in trees (pic left). If you’ve been to Central America, you may have notice that trees in parks and in towns are often painted white around the base, for the first 3 feet up or so. Supposedly the paint serves to dissuade ants and termites from ascending the trunks and colonizing the trees.

Tangent: On my previous CR trip with Bird Whisperer, I ate a live termite, at the encouragement of a guide. It tasted faintly of peanutbutter.

Nested Tangent: “Peanutbutter” is one of those words that will drive you crazy in Spanish. In Mexico it’s “Crema de Cacahuate.” But in Spain, it’s “Maneca de Mani”. In a Costa Rican supermarket I asked for it by both names, and received quizzical looks until the clerk realized I was looking for “Crema de Mani.”

Another word that’s like that in Spanish, and one that comes up for us a lot when we travel, is the word for non-identical twins (pic left = ours.) The word for identical twins in Spanish is “Los Gemelos.” But different Spanish speaking countries have completely different words for non-identical twins. In Mexico, it’s “Los Cuates”, in Spain, “Los Medizos”, in Cuba, “Las Jimaguas”, and in Colombia and Venezuela, “Los Morochos.” In Costa Rica, it’s just “Los Gemelos”; apparently like us English-speakers, they use the same word for both types of twins.

Snakes!

OK, let’s get back to reptiles. Here’s something else we saw in the mangroves- a Mangrove Boa (pic right). This guy lays about during the day, then prowls through the branches at night, hunting for birds, monkeys and other snakes. What happens when it catches one? We’ll get to that in a moment. We saw a few other snakes in the wild on our trip, but (much to the dismay of Bird Whisperer) no venomous ones. But venomous snakes are common in Costa Rica, and we learned quite a bit about them while we were there.

When we checked into the Blue Banyan, we received only one warning: kids stay out of the brush. Every gardener or agricultural worker we saw in and around Quepos wore knee-high rubber boots. (Now you know why my jungle-run probably wasn’t so smart…)

In Costa Rica- a tiny little country- about 600 people get bit by venomous snakes every year. Fully half of those bites are the work of just one species: the Fer-de-lance, Bothrops asper. The Fer-de-lance does not have the deadliest venom of Costa Rican snakes- that distinction goes to the Coral Snake. But it is far and away the most dangerous, as it is aggressively territorial.

If you’re like me, and you do a lot of hiking in the Western US, you’ve probably had a Rattlesnake rattle at you. And probably, like me, you jumped back and thought “Phew- close call!” But you probably weren’t bit; the Rattlesnake was warning you off. Now imagine if instead of warning off, that rattler came after you and tried to bite you. That’s what a Fer-de-lance often does.

Tangent: I’ve had oodles of run-ins with Rattlesnakes. See this post for a description of backpacking in a Rattlesnake-infested canyon in Southern Utah. But my all-time best Rattlesnake story is this: in June 1996, I jumped my mountain bike over a rattlesnake* lying across the trail as I was descending the singletrack off of Lewis Peak up in Ogden.

*Not as crazy as it sounds. I was moving at 20-25 mph and didn’t see it till it was 6-10 feet in front of me. It was bunny-hop or roll over it, and fear made me hop before I could think about it. So really, not crazy at all. Not like this or anything…

But here’s the bright side of the story: of those 600 bites per year, only 1 or 2 are typically fatal. Costa Rican hospitals and clinics are extremely well-stocked with antivenins, and the fatalities that do occur are most often due to bites that happen in extremely remote parts of the country, from which a medical facility can’t be accessed quickly enough.

Lizards!

CR also has plenty of cool lizards. Here’s a Common Basilisk, Basiliscus basiliscus, (pic left, not my best photo) we spotted basking in the mangroves. It’s also known as the “Jesus Christ Lizard” because 3 days after it dies it rises from the dead. Haha! A little Holy Week humor for you there. No, it’s called the JC Lizard because it’s able to run across the surface of the water for distances of up to 20 meters before sinking (after which it swims along just fine, though not as quickly.)

Iguanas are also common in CR, as is this guy, which looks like an Iguana, but isn’t. It’s a Ctenosaur (pronounced “tina-sore”), specifically a Black Ctenosaur, Ctenoaura similis. It’s native from Mexico to Panama and in CR you’ll see them all along the Pacific coast.

Tangent: It’s also been introduced (as escaped/discarded pets) into both Texas and Florida.

When you see a Black Ctenosaur, it’s pretty much always like right here- basking on the sun. But when it wants to, this guy can haul ass. C. similis is the fastest lizard on the planet, and has been clocked at a max speed of almost 22 mph.

Special Side Note – Sepentario Monteverde: Though this blog focuses on critters in the wild, I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention the amazing reptile zoo up in Santa Elena, Serpentario Monteverde. This place was a total 100% hit with the Trifecta, and afforded us an opportunity to see several snakes we didn’t see in the wild, including the Fer-de-lance, Coral Snake and several Boas. It also houses a great array of turtles (including an Alligator Snapper) and several Poison Dart Frogs. Best of all, you and your kids can pick up and handle (under supervision) various, non-venomous reptiles. Here’s a shot of Twin B holding a local native snake, the Iforgottowritedownae whateveritsnamewasii. (I would like all readers to note how fabulously cool it is that my daughter has absolutely zero fear of snakes. Her gemelo wouldn’t touch it.)

Another interesting- but unnerving- thing we saw at the reptile zoo was this Boa feeding on a live rat. I couldn’t bring myself to take a video (seemed just a bit too ghoulish) but you can get the idea from these 2 shots (left and below, right). Whole process took about ~8-10 minutes.

Up in Monteverde we encountered a number of other Creepy-Crawlies. One piece of advice I have for anyone visiting the cloud forest is to bring along a small flashlight. When you pass a trailside embankment, it’ll often be riddled with small holes, and the light will allow you to peek inside. Holes without webs are the most promising, as it means it’s regularly used by some critter entering/exiting.

More Spiders!

Here’s an Orange-Kneed Tarantula, (genus = Brachypelma, unclear on species), we found in one such hole. It’s a female, waiting out the day in (relative) safety before emerging to hunt at night. (I mentioned the monster-sized Costa Rican Tarantula Hawk Wasp I spotted later that day in this post.) This is a common tarantula up around Monetverde, and it’s a looker, with a Halloween-ish orange & black color pattern and a leg span of up to 8”.

There are 900 species of Tarantula in the world. Here in Utah the one we get is Aphonopelma iodius. I’ve spotted them while biking or hiking probably about a dozen times since I’ve lived here, always between July and October. October is most common, when you’ll see them crossing roads, but I’ve also seen them on the Shoreline trail just before dawn in the Summer months. (This photo was taken in late October along Shoreline behind the U. of Utah Hospital.) When you see a Tarantula walking about in October, it’s almost always a male. In general when it comes to Tarantulas, males roam, females park.

Tarantulas sure look scary, but they’re pretty harmless to humans, with a bite not much worse than a bee sting. And despite what you saw on the Brady Bunch, I’ve never encountered, or even heard of anyone finding, a Tarantula in their hotel room, much less their bed. But they’re a lot scarier to some smaller mammals; Orange-Kneed Tarantulas hunt (among other things) mice. When they catch one they paralyze it with a venomous bite, then inject it with digestive juices that liquefy the mouse’s insides. Over the next several days they’ll suck the mouse dry, leaving behind an empty sack of fur and bones.

Scorpions!

But here’s a Creepy-Crawly you are likely to find in your Costa Rican hotel room. I like to say that no Central American vacation is complete till you find a Scorpion in the bathroom, and I’ve encountered them in hotel bathrooms in both Costa Rica and Belize. Here’s the one I found in our Santa Elena Hotel (and promptly dispatched with a deodorant stick.) There are over 2,000 scorpion species in the world, found on every continent except Antarctica. 7 of them are native to CR. I believe this one is a Bark Scorpion, probably Centuroides margaritatus (or possibly C. limbatus.) Though the sting of either species is apparently extremely painful, neither appears to be as dangerous as the Arizona Bark Scorpion, Centruroides sculpturatus, which, before antivenin became widely available, killed a few hundred people a year in Mexico.

Scorpions are fascinating and ancient; they’ve been around for something like 400 million years. They’re common here in Utah (we have 9 species), and so I’ll return to them in a future post. But fascinating as Costa Rican Creepy-Crawlies are, this post has run on long enough, so I’ll wrap up with this photo of an unknown Centipede Bird Whisperer spotted in Monteverde. And remember, when vacationing in the Neotropics, shake out your shoes in the morning.

Side Note: Missing from this post of course is are the Vampire Bats and Bullet Ant we saw, which I’ve already blogged about in this post and this post ,respectively. I also, regrettably and in the interest of time, had to omit over several other wonderful Creepy-Crawlies we encountered, including Leaf-Cutter Ants, Frogs and Toads, a tree with poisonous bark (Manzanillo) and the Biggest Moth Ever (pic right.)

That’s 4 posts I’ve done on our Costa Rica trip. Seriously, do I get my money’s worth out of a neotropical vacation or what?

The Fantastic Four, Online Friends and Hemiparasites

Wow. What a great weekend. First, because we rode the Fantastic Four, which is how I will from hereon refer to the absolute 4 best mountain bike rides of the greater Hurricane-St. George quasi-rura-burba-politan area. They are- in order of utter awesomeness- Little Creek, Gooseberry, Zen and Guacamole.

Second, because I finally met, and rode with, KanyonKris.

This Part Seems Like A Tangent But Isn’t

For several years my brother- let’s call him “Phil”- lived in NYC. Phil has always been really into music, repeatedly deep-ending into various bands that apparently were just about to be as Big As The Beatles, but never did, invariably because of some tragic mishap, contract snafu, break-up or overdose, which usually occurred sometime back in the late 70’s/early 80’s. Examples include Television, Denim, Big Dipper, Undertones, Luna, Big Star, and any band that ever had Peter Holsapple as a member*.

*Except REM. Too successful.

Phil spent an inordinate amount of time and effort researching these bands, and corresponding online with other diehard fans of these bands, befriending several of them, and on multiple occasions, meeting them, (usually at some gig reuniting the surviving members of the band in question.) The results of these meetings- which were dutifully related to our sister- let’s call her “Elizabeth”- and me by Phil’s wife- let’s call her “Dara”- were predictably rich: Phil’s Online Friend would always turn out in person to be, well… a few tracks short of an EP. Yes, Phil met some odd ducks online, for which Elizabeth and I delighted in teasing him on countless occasions.

Now, fast forward nearly a decade. I have a blog. One of the regular readers, who also has a blog, is a frequent commenter. We have many similar interests, including science, the outdoors, and mountain-biking. He lives only 40 miles away, and coincidentally plans to be in St. George the same weekend as me. So naturally, we make plans to meet and ride together.

So Saturday morning, as I waited for KanyonKris to pull up to the motel lot* to meet us, my over-riding thought was: Please, please, don’t let this guy be a whack-job, or Phil will never ever let me hear the end of it.

*Yes, the abysmal Friday night weather drove even me- Ultimate Diehard Camper- to seek refuge in a motel. But camping Saturday night was great.

All About KanyonKris

I needn’t have worried. KanyonKris is one of the friendliest, most-likable, well-adjusted* guys I’ve ever met. My friends instantly liked him, and together we had fantastic day. He’s also the first mtn biker I met who’s actually done my mountain-lion safety eyes. (pic left) What a guy! We had a fun quick ride on Guacamole in the morning, then headed over to Little Creek in the afternoon.

*Certainly he’s more well-adjusted, friendly and likable than I am. Seriously, he’s a great guy. If you don’t know either of us in real life, but ever have an opportunity to meet one or the other, pick Kris. I would.

Side Note: KK’s wife- let’s call her “Jolene”- met up with us for the Little Creek ride. She of course is equally wonderful and instantly likable, and is a tough biker, riding all over the Mesa with us at a fine clip, having already raced that morning. (We were all very impressed, as whenever any of us races, the only follow-on activities we engage in are sitting around, drinking beer, and either a) bragging about or b) making excuses for, our race performance.)

Not only is KanyonKris a great guy, but he and Jolene have the Koolest* life. They live down in Utah Valley- an hour closer to St. George than I do- and Kris has a brother in St. George with whom they can stay whenever they feel like it. And Jolene’s parents, who live in the town next to them, watch their kids pretty much whenever. Biking Wife, No-Cost Reliable Childcare, Strategically-Located Sibling. A Kool Kombination*.

*Sorry. I kould not resist.

Longtime readers know that Little Creek is pretty much my favorite place in the world and it was fun to show Kris and Jolene around so many of the places up there I’ve blogged about, including the relic Ponderosas, North-facing mossy walls and big bright patches of Elegant Sunburst Lichen.

Wherever we rode over the weekend, hints of Spring were all around, and although we were still ~2 weeks early for desert wildflowers, everything’s teed up and getting ready to bloom. The Blackbrush is nearly fully-leafed out, and up on the mesas the Serviceberry is covered with soft, juvenile, light-green leaflets. And the Manzanita was already bristling with delicate pink blossoms. (pic right)

Saturday night we camped up on Little Creek, and as is my habit, I slept out under the stars. One of the reasons I like sleeping out (and not in a tent) is that when you wake up, you’re already outside; you don’t have to hem and haw and screw up your courage to brave the cold and crawl outside and see the dawn- you’re already in it. (pic left= dawn view E from camp) And so a few minutes before sunrise, while OC Rick, Clean Colin and Aurora Coryalis dozed in their respective tents*, I wandered about the mesa rim, snapping photos and checking out plants.

*Yes, they each bring their own tent each about 20 feet apart, and I go off another 20-30 feet or so to roll out my pad & bag. Our campsites are like little suburban subdivisions, each of us with our own “yard”.

I poked around at various mosses, lichens, cacti, and shrubs, (pic right = dawn view NW from camp) but my attention was most drawn to this common plant: Juniper Mistletoe, Phoradendron juniperinum. Though I’ve seen plenty of Mistletoe on Juniper before, there was something I noticed this time that really bugged me. As the day progressed and we spent several hours riding on nearby Gooseberry Mesa, it continued to bug me, and I chewed on it intermittently on the drive home. But first, a bit about Mistletoe.

I mentioned Phoradendron in a side note to a post I did on Dwarf Mistletoe, Arceuthobium, back in February. It’s a genus of roughly 3 dozen species native to the Western hemisphere. Like Dwarf Mistletoe, it’s parasitic, using one of a number of different conifers or angiosperm trees as its host. Juniper Mistletoe targets a couple of different Junipers, including our old friend- and my alternative nominee for Utah State Tree- Utah Juniper, Juniperus osteosperma.

Its form is that of a clump of “needles” on a Juniper that doesn’t look quite right. They’re much denser than a typical branch of twigs, and the color is slightly off, usually a tinge yellower, or sometimes even brown (when it dies) next to the grayer-green of the surrounding branches. And if you pause for a moment and look closely, you’ll see it isn’t actually part of the tree at all, but rather something completely different: another plant growing out of the wood of the Juniper.

All About Hemiparasites

Up till now when talking about Mistletoes and Dwarf Mistletoes, I’ve been pretty careless about throwing the term “parasite” around; it’s time to clean up my language. Technically, Phoradendron is a hemiparasite, in that it obtains water and nutrients from its host (with no benefit to the host) but also photosynthesizes (some of) its own nutrients. Hemiparasites are fascinating because they’re sorta-kinda parasites, and one wonders if they’ve evolved “half-way” towards parasitism (or maybe even “half-way back”.) But they’re definitely more than a simple epiphyte; Juniper Mistletoe can kill individual limbs and even whole trees, though it rarely seems to damage whole stands of Juniper on a large scale.

Side note: This actually wasn’t the only, or even first, hemiparasite I saw this past weekend. Desert Paintbrush, Castilleja chromosa, (pic right) which is already starting to bloom down on Zen trail, is also hemiparasitic, commonly attaching to the roots of Blackbrush, Sagebrush and other shrubs. But since oncoming weather prevented us from lingering, and since Paintbrushes will be plenty common in another 3 months in the Wasatch, I’ll save them for another post.

There are plants that are “full” or holoparasites, and which don’t photosynthesize at all. An example would be Dodder* (genus = Cuscuta, ~170 different species) (pic left) a shrubby, hairy-looking parasite, species of which come in various shades of yellow, orange or red.

*Some Dodder species actually do contain low levels of apparently functional chlorophyll, technically making them hemiparasitic.

Tangent: Supposedly there are very rare albino Coast Redwoods which are root-clones of a “normal” Redwood. These albinos, which never grow very tall, are actually holoparasites of their clonal parent. Locations of such albino Redwoods are allegedly kept secret to discourage visitation.

P. juniperus is spread from tree to tree not by exploding seedpods (like Dwarf Mistletoe) but by birds, most commonly Thrushes, Robins and Solitaires, who eat the berries and then pass the seeds while perched on a nearby, different, Juniper.

Tangent: So there’s something cool going on here. Longtime readers may remember that what looks like a berry on a Juniper is not actually a berry, but rather a modified cone which is can be thought of as an alternate evolutionary path toward “fruit-hood”. But the berries on Juniper Mistletoe are true, anatomically correct berries (Phoradendron is an angiosperm, as we’ll discuss in a moment) so the Juniper Mistletoe berries are real, actual berries, on a Juniper tree.

So this is all well and good, but I knew all this before this past weekend. What was bugging me was something else: Why does Juniper Mistletoe look so much like Juniper?

Only 3 possible reasons occurred to me. First, 2 different plant species often look alike if they’re closely-related. We can rule that one right out; Juniper is a conifer, Mistletoe is an angiosperm. They haven’t shared a common ancestor for at least a couple hundred million years.

Tangent: For a long time it was believed that there was no such thing as a parasitic conifer. Then one was found- Parasitaxus ustus, (pic right)a small woody shrub which is actually a Podocarp, is an honest-to-goodness coniferous parasite, with only vestigial, non-functional chloroplasts. It’s native to- yes, where else- my favorite Gondwanaland-fragment and conifer wonderland, New Caledonia. (Man, I have got to get my ass down there sometime. That place sounds amazing.)

The second possible reason would be that both Juniper and Juniper Mistletoe evolved their common twig-form in response to similar environmental pressures. But this idea too quickly falls apart. There are other angiosperms all over the place up on Little Creek and Gooseberry. Sagebrush, Serviceberry, Tree Cholla, Prickly Pear, Blackbrush, Cliffrose- none of them look anything like a Juniper. The chances that the one angiosperm up there that happened to follow the same evolutionary-morphology path as Juniper being the same one that parasitizes it seems next to zero.

And furthermore, when you get up close, they don’t have the same morphology. (pic left) The Mistletoe stems are scale-less/leafless; the green is the stems themselves, which are photosynthetic. They just look like Juniper twigs from a distance, but up close they’re a mimic- a cheap copy.

That leaves the third possibility, which is that the Mistletoe has evolved to mimic its host. But why? Junipers can’t see, even if they did have some proactive way of removing the Mistletoe. What does it matter what the parasite looks like?

The only possibility I can think of is that host-mimicry enables the Mistletoe to escape detection by some possible predator that would favor eating the stems of the Mistletoe over Juniper twigs. And since the Mistletoe generally occurs higher than a deer or cow can reach, that predator must be some kind of bird or a squirrel of some sort.

Hours later, after I finally arrived home (while I should’ve been sleeping) some poking around online seems to suggest that indeed I figured it out; a number of mistletoes do seem to mimic their hosts, even down to the species level, and it’s assumed that such mimicry is probably a defense against herbivory. Being offline for a weekend, it was fun to figure it out on my own.

Like so many desert trips, this one left me thinking straightaway about the next. But this time my daydreaming has some urgency; peak wildflower bloom is about 3 weeks away. I need to figure out a daytrip strategy down there fast.

Postscript: It occurred to me last night, and may well have occurred to you, that there’s an obvious problem with the mimicry theory: the copy-job sucks. By the end of the day Sunday as we were riding on Gooseberry Mesa I was routinely picking out clumps of P. juniperinum from 40-50 feet away, in part by shape, but largely by the color- just a bit too yellow-green. As I’ve blogged previously, the color vision of pretty much any bird blows mine away; surely they could easily pick out the clumps of Mistletoe?

That leaves me with only 2 possible explanations: First is that the color-match is better when the Mistletoe is very young, and presumably more vulnerable. I have no evidence for this, and would have to do a lot more poking around to pursue this idea. Second is that the mimicry is a primarily a defense against squirrels, who (I believe) lack color vision.

Jeezum! What Is The Flipping Deal With All These Fetching Box Elder Bugs?

My recent rant on Winter seems only to have angered her more (and isn’t that just like a stalker? I am telling you, you cannot reason with them!) But I’ve been teased by Spring, and I can’t get Spring-like thoughts out of my mind. I mentioned how lovely the weather was Saturday, and I went on about biking and Meadowlarks and such. But the sign of Spring that everyone in my family noticed was something else.

When I moved to Utah in the mid-nineties, there were 4 things I encountered during my first year that I did not expect. You probably think I’m going to list some things about religion, or the liquor laws or slot canyons some such, but you’re wrong. I knew about all those things long before I moved here. No, the first surprise was thermal inversions, which I’ve already blogged about.

All About Cursing In Utah

The second surprise was the whole, weird Alternative Cursing Lexicon here in Utah. Many people raised in Utah seem just a bit more averse than folks in other parts of the US to swearing or taking the Lord’s name in vain casually. That wasn’t a huge surprise, but what was a surprise was that in place of “regular” cursing”, a whole strange alternative lexicon of “pseudo-curses” has apparently evolved over time. Examples include “Fetch”, “Flip”, “Gol!”, “Jeezum”, “Oh My Heck!”, “Bullcrap”, and “The F-Bomb”, among others*. And native-Utahns will use-and even conjugate- these words just like we- er, pardon me- just like some people use “regular” curse words, such as in “Fetch! I broke my flippin’ derailleur!”

*Awesome Wife’s all-time favorite = “Oh For Tender!”

The third surprise was Fry Sauce, which I won’t get into, because if you live in Utah you already know all about it, and if you don’t, it’s not really worth explaining.

Personal Trivia Factoid: Over the past decade I have come to love fry sauce. I am the only non-native Utahn I know who puts fry sauce on burgers.

But the fourth surprise, and the point of this post, was/is Box Elder Bugs, Boisea rubrolineatus (pic left), which, as everyone in Utah knows, come out of the woodwork the first few warm days of Spring, as well as on scattered, warm “Indian Summer”-like days in the Fall. No really, I mean it- they actually come out of the woodwork, as in the woodwork of your house, as I’ll explain in a moment.

Box Elder Bugs occur across North America, coincident with the range of their favorite food source and home, Box Elder Trees. The Box Elder, Acer negundo, is one of Utah’s 3 native Maples, and though Box Elder Bugs favor that tree- specifically female A. negundo (Box Elder trees are dioecious, meaning trees are either male or female)- they’ll also make use of other Maples and even Ash species. There are 2 species of Box Elder Bug, which look (and behave) pretty similar: B. rubrolineatus from the Rockies West (and therefore here in Utah), and B. trivittata (pic right) East of the Rockies.

When I first encountered Box Elder Bugs I was highly disturbed. On the first (in a while) bright warm sunny day, they are everywhere, particularly on or near sunny windowsills, and when I first laid eyes on them, my first thoughts were of Cockroaches. I went to college in Philadelphia, during which time I resided in a succession of dorm rooms and apartments that were invariably roach-infested. My college years are a bit hazy now, but some of my clearest memories are of killing roaches with my bare hand and detonating chemical fog-bombs in my dorm room. So my first thoughts were, “Great. Utah Cockroaches.” But as I’ve learned about Box Elder Bugs I’ve found out that they’re far more benign than my collegiate nemeses.

The first thing worth knowing about Box Elder Bugs is that they are a True Bug. A lot of people- me most of all- throw the term “bug” around pretty loosey-goosey as sort of a catch-all phrase for all kinds of invertebrates, including insects, spiders, scorpions and woodlice. But to a real entomologist (like this guy- cool blog), the word “bug” has a very certain meaning, specifically an insect of the order Hemiptera, which includes 80,000 species of insects which all have similar characteristic mouthparts. In a True Bug, the mandibles (crush /biting /cutting mouthparts) have joined with the maxillae (steadying/ manipulating/ chewing mouthparts) to form a proboscis, which is a specialized beak-ish structure used to pierce tissues and suck out liquids.

What kinds of tissues and liquids? Usually plant tissues and sap, but not always, as we’ll see in a moment.

There are other defining features as well; Hempiterans often have partially-hardened forewings, as do Box Elder Bugs, which is different from Beetles (order = Coleoptera), which have fully-hardened forewings. But the deal with the mouthparts/proboscis is the key differentiator.

In my defense, Cockroaches look at first glance a lot like a True Bug. But to an entomologist the difference is obvious; the mouthparts are all wrong*; Cockroaches have distinct mandibles and maxillae. (diagram right)

*The wings are wrong, too.

In addition to Box Elder Bugs, you’re already familiar with lots of True Bugs. Aphids, Cicadas, Leafhoppers and Stink Bugs (Shield Bugs) are all True Bugs, as are- get ready for it- Bedbugs.

Geeky-But-Cool-Side-Note: The phylogeny, or family tree, or Hemiptera is in flux. Traditionally Hemiptera has been divided into 2 orders, Homoptera, which includes Aphids and Cicadas, and Heteroptera, which includes Box Elder and Stink Bugs. But it now appears that Cicadas are more closely-related to Box Elder and Stink Bugs than they are to Aphids, making Homoptera a paraphyletic grouping. This is exactly the same deal we saw last summer when we looked at Mules Ears and Balsamroots in the Wasatch: recent DNA evidence forcing biologists to reassess groupings of and relationships between different species, and it’s a great example of why now is such an exciting and revolutionary time in biology.

Tangent: Stink Bugs- also called Shield Bugs, for their shield-like shape- which are a worldwide group including over 5,500 species, are the second-most common insect we see inside of our house in the warmer months. I’m not sure, but I think the most common species we find indoors here in Utah is this guy, the Consperse Stink Bug, Euschistus conspersus.

Confusingly, there is another group of insects called “Stink Bugs” here in the Intermountain West, which are not actually Stink Bugs, or even True Bugs. You’ve undoubtedly seen- and probably run over- these guys if you mtn bike singletrack along the Wasatch. They’re Darkling Beetles, of the genus Eleodes, and are Beetles and therefore not True Bugs. They’re called “Stink Bugs” for their chemical defense: like true Stink Bugs, they spray foul-smelling chemicals from their rear ends when threatened, though they evolved this mechanism completely independently (yet another nice example of convergent evolution, like Vultures, as well as CAM and C4 photosynthesis.) They’re a favorite food of mice, who have figured out how to roll them over in a manner to avoid the spray.

Bedbugs (pic below, left) have put the proboscis architecture to a more dastardly (to us) purpose; they pierce animal tissues and suck blood. Bedbugs, by the way have one of the weirdest and creepiest sex lives/anatomy in the animal world. I won’t get into it here, but David Quammen’s book Flight Of The Iguana provides a riveting description. But in contrast to Bedbugs, as well as many of the other invertebrates we’ve looked at, the sex lives of Box Elder Bugs are pretty vanilla. There are no parthenogenetic females (Aphids), no deceptive, mate-stealing triploid-females (Weevils), no “throw-away” chromosomally haploid males (Bees, Ants, Wasps) and no mate-devouring females (Black Widows.) Genetically, Box Elder Bugs reproduce very much like us: gender is chromosomally determined by the male, who provides either an X or Y chromosome, while females are always XX.

Side Note: Not all Hempiterans use the XY system of sex determination. Many True Bugs, including Water Striders (pic right) and Water Bugs, use what is called the “X0” system, whereby females have 2 “X”’s, males have a single “X”, and there’s no such thing as a “Y”. An interesting corollary of an X0 system is that every male in the species is aneuploid, having an odd number of chromosomes.

Tangent: There’s actually a mammal that’s been found whose males have no “Y” chromosome, and when I learned of it I thought that it might be a mammalian example of an X0 system, but it turns out to be even weirder. The male Mole Vole, Ellobius lutescens, native to the foothills of the Caucasus Mountains has a single “X” and no “Y” chromosome. But females also have only a single “X”, and the sex determinant seems to be our old friend the SRY gene, which apparently sits on some “X”’s. So all Mole Voles- male and female- have an odd number of chromosomes. This critter is the subject of much interest to biologists because it hints at a possible evolutionary future for us mammals with our strangely shrinking (over the evolutionary time-scale) Y chromosome, but that’s something I’ll have to leave for another post…

And speaking of mating, that’ll happen soon enough. When you see Box Elder Bugs scurrying around on that first warm day, what’s going on is this: last Fall, as the weather cooled, they migrated toward any warm spot, in an attempt to conserve energy and remain alive*. They congregated on the sunny, South-facing walls of your house, and when the sun went down, they crawled inside, through cracks and windowsills, trying to stay warm. When Winter set in, they went into hibernation.

*2 quick clarifications here. First, they technically don’t “hibernate”; that’s something specific to mammals. But they go “dormant” in a very hibernation-like way. Second, I read somewhere that only females “hibernate”, but couldn’t confirm that in time for this post.

When bright sunlight again warms the South-facing walls, the bugs wake up and start scrambling. They want to get back outside, eat, mate, and lay eggs. They don’t want to stay indoors; a Box Elder Bug doesn’t lay eggs or reproduce indoors. When you see them scurrying around your windowsill, they are lost; they’re trying to get outside.

Side Note: When I learned this, a light bulb went on for me: We’ve lived in our current home for 7 years. In all that time I have never found a Box Elder Bug in a North-facing room. All the rooms we’ve ever seen/found them in- kitchen, dining room, family room, office, master bedroom- are all South-facing.

When and if they get outside they’ll start eating. Their favorite food is Box Elder seeds, which is why they’re drawn to the female trees. After a couple of weeks of eating and sunning, you’ll see them mating* everywhere, facing away from each other, joined at the rear (pic right). The female then lays her eggs (pic below, left) in crevices of the bark of female A. negundo. The nymphs (pic right, in left of photo), which look like little adults** but with bright red bodies and underdeveloped wings can be found come Summer, often congregating on their favored trees. And speaking of wings, Box Elder Bugs are lousy flyers; ~20 feet is usually the limit of a single flight segment, though a chance wind may catch one and drop it a couple of miles away.

*If, even after reading this post, you feel you simply must squash Box Elder Bugs, at least have the decency not to do so while they’re mating. That’s just wrong.

**Another distinguishing characteristic of all True Bugs is that the form of he young is the same basic structural form as the adults; they don’t undergo any kind of radical metamorphosis, as do moths or butterflies, for example.

Although many True Bugs are serious agricultural or garden pests, Box Elder Bugs really aren’t. In extreme cases they can damage or partially defoliate a female Box Elder or other Maple, but that’s really rare.

And that’s the most important thing to know about Box Elder Bugs; they’re not really pests. They don’t eat garbage, they don’t lay eggs in your cupboards, they don’t come out at night and crawl across your face. They’re just trying to get outside. They don’t bite or spread disease, so when you see one on the window sill, you might consider just picking it up and letting it go outside*.

*Or squash it if you want. They’re not endangered, and I’m not enough of bleeding heart to tell you to spare a bug or anything, but they really don’t do us any harm.

Postscript: I’ll be offline for a few. OC Rick, Clean Colin, Aurora Coryalis and I are responding to the Never-Ending Winter with pure, selfish cowardice: We’re abandoning our families and fleeing down to St. George/Hurricane for a weekend of desert mtn biking and camping.

Post-Postscript: Oh Fetch! This invertebrate-oriented post reminds me- I totally flipping forgot to do the Costa Rican Creepie-Crawlie Bonus Post! Crap. Well, I know it’s late, but I could probably squeeze it in next week sometime, if there’s interest. 3 or more “Yes, Do It” comments and I’ll do it.