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Phorid Newsletter #5

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Phorid Newsletter Number 5 Brian V. Brown, editor ??date Drawing of Stichillus planipes Borgmeier by Jesse Cantley Again, greetings from Los Angeles! It has slope of the Andes, one montane site on the been a busy summer, but it is time for me to Amazonian (east) slope of the Andes and report on my Ecuador trip. one lowland site in the Amazonian region. Our first locality was the Maquipucuna Biological Reserve, 1300m Phorid collecting activities in Ecuador, elevation on the western slope. We stayed 1996. there for only four days and got relatively little: I reared Apocephalus (Mesophora) mortifer from a small cantharid, I got several This year I focussed my efforts on Myriophora and Gymnophora spiracularis the South American country of Ecuador. In from an injured millipede, and I collected 1987 I made my first visit to the tropics, several different phorids from ants. consisting of a rather poorly-organized but Our next site was to be the Bilsa still fascinating visit to this country. I was Biological Station in a coastal range of interested to see how it would appear nine mountains in Esmeraldas province. It was to years later. be a four-hour drive from Maquipucuna, Unlike 1987, we had a huge which we had plenty of time for since we advantage this time. Through a grant from had to meet our transportation (pack mules) our museum, I was able to send Mr. Peter at 10:00AM. The night before we were to Hibbs to Ecuador in late January to scout out leave, however, it rained heavily and in the field sites, operate Malaise traps and arrange morning the road was blocked by numerous collecting permits. Peter stayed there until landslides. We struggled out, waiting for late July and greatly increased the number of people to dig out the rocks and mud specimens that we were able to collect. blocking the road, and finally made it to the In May, Jesse Cantley and I travelled main road, still hopeful of reaching the pack to Ecuador to join Peter. Our plans were to mules on time. A flat tire that had to be visit four sites: two on the Pacific (west) fixed and a truck blocking the road while Phorid Newsletter, 5, page 1 farmers loaded it with cattle completely proboscis that they were using to drag the obliterated our optimism, and we resigned ants away. When more than one female was ourselves to show up late and have to turn on the tray they seemed to fight over the around again. Amazingly, when we arrived carcass. at the meeting site at 2:00PM the mules had We left Bilsa after a week, this type just arrived. We packed our gear on them, by a brutal ride on the back of packmules. and started walking up the 18km road to the Returning to Quito, we recovered and station. It soon became apparent, however, decided that rather than trying for two more that the road was incredibly bad, with thick, sites, one more would be enough. We made sucking mud up to mid-calf on every step. plans for our final destination, Yasuni The mules and their driver quickly left us far National Park in the amazonian lowlands. behind, and eventually it got dark out. We We drove to Yasuni in a single day, which I were stuck: the mules had our flashlights, found rather frightening because the road water, money and everything else. traversed nearly the entire country. In 1987 Eventually, the moon came up (at about most of this area was completely 11:00PM) and it was bright enough for us to inaccessible; now it is cut-over and largely see and continue. Walking up that road all destroyed. Still, the scenery was spectacular, night was the most intensely brutal and with relatively few problems we reached experience to which I have ever been the research station that night. subjected. We were exhausted, wet and Yasuni turned out to be one of the incredibly footsore from the grasping mud. richest and most productive sites at which I By the time we arrived at the station it was have ever collected. We collected large 5:00AM, and the howler monkeys were numbers and a great diversity of phorids already beginning their morning calls. associated with ants, and made many new The next day we were barely able to ant-phorid associations. In particular, we walk. My feet were rubbed raw and I was found two species of phorids parasitizing the completely exhausted. Everyone at the large ant Cephalotes atratus: one was an station was astounded at how bad the road Apocephalus that was attacking the head, was. and the other was a Diocophora that, When we got around to collecting at amazingly enough, was parasitizing the legs Bilsa we got a few things. We crushed a of the ant. large number of different ponerine ants and Another interesting observation was got one species of Apocephalus attracted to at a nest of the leaf-cutter ant Atta all of them. We found a large raid of cephalotes, where we saw two species of Labidus praedator and collected quite a few Neodohrniphora attacking the ants associated phorids. Injuring millipedes was simultaneously. We carefully collected also an excellent collecting method, which individual ants that they attacked and I hope yielded huge numbers of Myriophora and to demonstrate that the two species were Puliciphora. One especially interesting partitioning the host resource based on ant observation was the behavior of a couple of worker size. female Dohrniphora ecitophila that were I could have stayed at Yasuni for attracted to some crushed Odontomachus much longer, but two weeks were all we ants. This phorid has an extremely long had. I am still sorting through all the Phorid Newsletter, 5, page 2 material we collected, but clearly Ecuador, disseminated throughout the phorid and especially Yasuni, was a tremendously community. rewarding place to work. I want to point out this is not intended to be a forum for criticizing Henry's work. Instead, I wish to point out What's new on the Web? new information, omissions and small errors in fact that are inevitable when such a large The phorid website is located at: work is undertaken. http://www.lam.mus.ca.us/lacmnh/ departments/research/entomology/phorids/ NATURAL HISTORY. For starters, I will point phorspez.html out that a couple of life history papers about Recently, I posted my list of all Phalacrotophora punctiapex Borgmeier phorid species so far recorded from La Selva were not included. This species is a nest Biological Station in Costa Rica. I soon parasite of sphecid wasps of the genus hope to post some color images to go with Trypoxylon, according to the following this list. references: In issue #4, I said I would list the phorid holdings in the Los Angeles County Coville, R.E. and C. G riswold. 1983. Nesting biology of Tripoxylon xanthandrum in Costa Rica with Museum. I decided not to do this, as it is observations on its spider prey (Hymenoptera: probably of minimal interest to most people. Sphecidae; A raneae: Senoculidae). Journal of I have posted this information on the web the Kansas Entomological Society 56:205- page, however, if anyone would like to see 216. it. Coville, R.E. and C. G riswold. 1984. Biology of Trypoxylon (Trypargilum) superbum (Hymenoptera: Sphecidae), a spider-hunting Address change wasp with extended guarding of the brood by males. Journal of the Kansas Entomological Society 57:365-376. Please note the new address for Dr. Guangchun Liu, who will be in South Korea for one year. KEYS TO GENERA. The keys must be used with caution for specimens from the Neotropical Region. Some species will not Updating Disney's book on Phoridae key out to their correct genus, especially some Beckerina, Macrocerides, As we all know, Dr. Henry Disney Apocephalus and many Metopina-group produced a wonderful textbook on Phoridae males. This was an unavoidable problem, in 1994, exhaustively surveying the because so much of the Neotropical fauna is literature on phorid life histories, unknown, but others should be aware of it. providing a new key to phorid genera and a Also a new genus, Vestigipoda, has list of the necessary literature to identify been described: Disney, R.H.L. (1996) A new phorids to species. I propose that we provide genus of scuttle fly (Diptera; Phoridae) whose legless, updates to this book in the Phorid wingless, females mimic ant larvae (Hymenoptera; Newsletter so that this information is better Formicidae). Sociobiology, 27, 95-118. It is unlikely Phorid Newsletter, 5, page 3 to be confused with any other phorid genera fireflies. in the key, however! These six techniques collected 53 species of Apocephalus. The number of species collected by the various methods GUIDE TO THE LITERATURE. Since the book were as follows: has been published, the following new keys Number of spp. collected have become available: Total Exclusive Malaise 23 20 Raids 22 20 Neotropical Apocephalus (Mesophora)- BL 4 2 Over baited 3 2 Brown, B.V. (1996) Preliminary analysis of a host shift: Crushed 3 1 revision of the Neotropical species of Apocephalus, Rearing 1 1 subgenus Mesophora (Diptera: Phoridae). Contributions in Science, 462, 1-36. The overlap of the catch of Apocephalus species is as follows: Neodohrniphora- Disney, R.H.L. (1996) A key to Neodohrniphora (Diptera: Phoridae), parasites of leaf- M R B O C R cutter ants (Hymenoptera: Formicidae). Journal of Malaise 23 1 1 0 1 0 Natural History, 30, 1377-1389. Raids 22 0 1 0 0 B.L. 4 0 1 0 Over baited 3 0 0 Plethysmochaeta- Disney, R.H.L.
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  • Parasite Interactions in Urban Gardens

    Parasite Interactions in Urban Gardens

    Environmental Entomology, XX(X), 2017, 1–9 doi: 10.1093/ee/nvx155 Research Pollinator Ecology and Management Vegetation Management and Host Density Influence Bee– Parasite Interactions in Urban Gardens Hamutahl Cohen,1,2,3 Robyn D. Quistberg,1 and Stacy M. Philpott1 1Environmental Studies Department, University of California, Santa Cruz, CA 95064, 2Environmental Studies Department, University of California, 1156 High Street, Santa Cruz, CA 95060, and 3Corresponding author, e-mail: [email protected] Subject Editor: Gloria DeGrandi-Hoffman Received 17 April 2017; Editorial decision 28 August 2017 Abstract Apocephalus borealis phorid flies, a parasitoid of bumble bees and yellow jacket wasps in North America, was recently reported as a novel parasitoid of the honey bee Apis mellifera Linnaeus (Hymenoptera: Apidae). Little is known about the ecology of this interaction, including phorid fecundity on bee hosts, whether phorid-bee parasitism is density dependent, and which local habitat and landscape features may correlate with changes in parasitism rates for either bumble or honey bees. We examined the impact of local and landscape drivers and host abundance on phorid parasitism of A. mellifera and the bumble bee Bombus vosnesenskii Radoszkowski (Hymenoptera: Apidae). We worked in 19 urban gardens along the North-Central Coast of California, where phorid parasitism of honey bees was first reported in 2012. We collected and incubated bees for phorid emergence, and surveyed local vegetation, ground cover, and floral characteristics as well as land cover types surrounding gardens. We found that phorid parasitism was higher on bumble bees than on honey bees, and phorids produced nearly twice as many pupae on individual bumble bee hosts than on honey bee hosts.