swells's Journal

While visiting my son and his family in Post Falls yesterday, my granddaughter and I found a few interesting insects.

There were plenty of honey bees (Apis mellifora), and at least two species of bumble bees, but I was only able to get a decent picture of one. It looks to me like a Hunt's bumble bee (Bombus huntii), but I'd like a confirmation on that. Unfortunately, I didn't recognize the plants that the bees were visiting, and I didn't think to take pictures and post them on iNaturalist. Next time I'll try that!

We also saw and photographed a European paper wasp (Polistes dominula) and a small fly, which looks to me like it might be a robber fly (Asilidae), but I'll wait to see if anyone IDs it for me.

I spent my last few hours in Hawaii on July 4th looking for mosquitoes. I think I found a few, too, but I was unable to catch any since I didn't have a net. I'll try remember to bring one on my next trip.

While hunting mosquitoes in my parents' yard, I ran across something else that was interesting: a dead dove (probably a spotted dove) covered with flies. And not just any flies, but big mean-looking, bug-eyed blow flies. I tentatively identified them as Oriental Latrine Flies (Chrysomya megacephala), but I'm hoping for an iNaturalist confirmation on this.

These flies lay their eggs in corpses (including food items, such as fish and meat) and feces, on which the resulting larvae feed. And if there isn't enough of that around, they have been known to settle for living human flesh, entering through an open wound and causing myiasis.

So after taking some pictures, I properly disposed of the maggot-infested dead dove. I hate to think where the dozens of escaping adults went after that.

While waiting for my flight, I noticed a boy taking pictures of something on the ground. It turned out to be land snails - lots of them. So I took a few pictures and later identified them as giant African land snails (Achatina fulica). These snails arrived in Hawaii in 1932 and have been a threat to native and cultivated plants ever since.

Yesterday I found a tiny blue beetle in my parents' yard, a couple miles south of Kailua Kona, Hawaii. I knew it was a beetle, and probably a lady beetle, but that was the best I could do. With the help of iNaturalist, though, I was soon able to identify it to species (although I could use a confirmation on this) as the Metallic Blue Lady Beetle (Curinus coeruleus).

I did a bit of searching online and found that Curinus coeruleus was introduced to Hawaii in 1932 to control the coconut mealy bug (Nipeococcus nipae) and the psillid (Heteropsylla cubana) , a pest of the haole koa tree (Leucaena leucocephala).

[Leucaena leucocephala was purposefully introduced in the early nineteenth century. It has since become one of Hawaii's ten worst invasive species, according to Hawaiian Plant Life (Guffsafson, Herbst, and Rundel, 2014).]

It turns out that Curinus coeruleus larvae also like to eat the eggs of the Asian Tiger Mosquito (Aedes albopictus) - which is a very good thing indeed, since this mosquito is a vector of the Dengue virus in Hawaii.

Since I'm leaving Hawaii today, I probably won't be able to find and identify Aedes albopictus before I leave. But I'll spend my last few hours in paradise looking for that little beastie.