10 IV 2014 – Desert Museum and other locations, Tucson, AZ

I was in Tucson, AZ last week for the Entomological Society of America – Pacific Branch meeting 2014. After the conference, I took a few days to wander around Arizona and check out the desert. I didn’t get to do as much collecting or insect photography as I would have liked (I was not alone and it was really hot out) but I saw lots of insects, especially when I wasn’t really trying. However, anyone that has spent any amount of time with me in the last few years knows that I am always looking around for insects.

One location that we were told was a must-see was the Desert Museum, and, after visiting, I agree with this suggestion whole-heartedly. If you like dirt and cacti and the possibility of heat stroke while learning, The Desert Museum offers both of these features and more. It’s a zoo, a botanical garden, an aquarium and a natural history museum and an art gallery. It also offers fine dining and four pressed-penny designs. The taxi driver said that most people spend 2-3 hours; we stayed for 8 and still missed the art gallery. I also drank my age in gallons of water.

Immediately upon entering the park, you are led to a small garden dedicated to pollinators. It was still relatively cool outside , and there wasn’t a lot of action, but there was one monarch bouncing about. There was a tag on it’s wing with a number, but I didn’t see anything about the study it was a part of. This monarch caterpillar (Danaus plexippus) was crawling around in a planter and, although most folks regard the monarch as a creature of beauty and grace, this caterpillar was klutzy and fell off the plant it was eating two times.

Hidden on the flowers were crab spiders (Family Thomisidae). There yellow ones did a better job at blending in than the green ones, though I didn’t see any that were holding prey so maybe they were all obvious. I did see a tarantula walking around in Pima Canyon (we’re talking pet-store sized) but before I knew what was going on, it was in a hole, so I was not able to snap any photos. That was the first arthropod I had spotted in the wild in Arizona, and everything after that was a mostly a let down.
The Desert Museum is densely landscaped with velvet mesquite trees. When we were there, the trees were coated with thick yellow catkins, which themselves were coated in honey bees (most of which were reportedly africanized!) Amidst the bees, you could spot (and hear) Pepsis formosa (Hymenoptera: Pompilidae), a huge wasp known as a tarantula hawk. Use the honeybee in the bottom of the picture to get an idea of the scale. Adult pompilids apparently love to chow down on pollen, as that’s what these were doing. These wasps will sting and paralyze tarantulas, and drag them back to their nests as provisions for their offspring. I had my head near them while taking photographs. Later that day, I learned that their sting is very painful. I need to get a macro zoom lens. Use the in the bottom of the picture to get an idea of the scale.

To showcase aquatic insects, the Desert Museum has a tiny pool with plants. It’s open and full of plants to attract aquatics and those that rely on pools for water and reproduction. There were a ton of damselflies (Order Odonata, Suborder Zygoptera) mating and laying eggs in the pool.

Odonata mating behavior is primitive, and characteristic of the order. First, the male places a spermatophore (sperm packet) thats produced at the tip of his abdomen into a pouch at the base of his abdomen. Then male he grasps the female behind her head with claspers at the tip of his abdomen. She then uses her abdomen to get the sperm packet from where he placed it and stores the sperm. She can then inseminate the eggs, and then lays them in the water. She doesn’t have to inseminated the eggs immediately, however, and males are equipped to “scrape out” or remove an earlier mate’s sperm from the female. Also, they can fly while they do all of this. There’s a video that I shot at the bottom of this post showing some of the the females laying eggs.

After we visited  the Desert Museum, we headed to the town of Bisbee, AZ. If you ever find yourself near there, I recommend stopping by. It’s a proudly kooky historic copper mining town that offers a lot of shops and cafes, as well as an incredible number of hotels for such a small place. If you plan to stay, book a room at the Inn at Castle Rock. We picked it randomly, and I have no doubt that we picked the best place in town. Our room was “the most haunted”, they turned on the bat signal for us, and we had beers on the balcony with some train drivers from Saskatoon who appeared to know a friend’s father from Warman. They also boast at least 4 designs of pressed pennies at the Queen Mine. The oldest professional baseball park in the United States in nearby Warren. Bisbee is all right in my book. The local beer was flat and boring, which is not like the town at all, which was hilly and fun.We didn’t see a lot of insects there but we did find this swallowtail, chrysalis (Lepidoptera: Papilionidae) on the side of a building before a man told me that his dog wanted to know what I was doing.

On the last day, we hiked through Madera Canyon, 30 miles north of the Arizona-Mexico border. Surprisingly, the landscape is entirely different that everything else we had seen. There were huge oaks, birches and pines. We hiked in shade nearly the entire 3 miles of our hike. There were a lot of insects, but I only managed to get a decent picture of this bordered plant bug, Largus sp. (Hemiptera: Largidae). It landed on me and didn’t want to leave. Then, it left. I like ’em.

Here’s another picture of the scary wasp. I wish that I had brought collection equipment or borrowed some from the University, but it was also fun to walk around and just find what I could, while trying to avoid heat stroke and becoming a raisin by gulping liters of water and applying sunscreen every 20 minutes. Be sure to watch the video below to see how some insects have been enjoying each other’s company for 600 million years.