Fall is swiftly turning into winter here in southern Ontario, with cold nights and disappearing leaves…This weekend looked like the last in while to offer any kind of warmish temperatures, so Catherine, Gil Wizen and I headed to Tommy Thompson Park (Leslie Spit) o see if we could find some cool arthropods. The following is a condensed collection of pictures I managed to get.
On the way to pick up Gil at the train station, I snapped this shot. It actually has Catherine in the frame.
You can see that the goldenrod has largely gone to seed.
A surprisingly colorful Phidippus audax.
Just look at that abdomen!
There were quite a few syrphids about, some of them just had to bask on exposed perches in order to warm up enough to fly.
We saw about a jillion cucumber leaf beetles (Diabrotica undecimpunctata), mainly feeding on goldenrod
A “buffalo treehopper” (a membracid in the genus Ceresa) hides out on a willow stem. Gil took a bunch of shots of this with both wide lens and MPE-65, so look out for them!
This is an alydid bug (broad-headed bug), one of several we saw basking in the morning sun. This is likely Alydus eurinus, a common species in Ontario.
These beachside wolf spiders (Pardosa) are plainly ornamented, but just a lovely shade of bluish gray.
A really really big mite we found under some bark. This is likely a species of Trombidium.
The subjects of a high-mag MPE-65 shot have got to be really calm creatures. Check out how this pierid is dwarfed by Gil’s diffuser.
It was the most cooperative pierid ever.
This is my attempt at wide-angle macro of the same insect.
A squashed Pardosa wolf spider on the road, being fed on by Myrmica rubra.
Winter is definitely coming. This Culex pipiens has a “hypertrophied fat body” (she is fat) a condition that adapts her to living out the winter in a sheltered location.
Golden dung flies (Scathophaga stercoraria) having an end-of-summer romance.
A Myrmica rubra worker investigating a fungus-killed caterpillar. If she feeds on this carcass, and gets infected, her colony will likely kill her, then dispose of her body somewhere far away.
The alianthus webworm moth (Atteva aurea) is a beautiful species that is not found in BC…Though seems quite common here.
A gorgeous amaurobiid spider, recently disturbed from her cribellate silk retreat.
A running crab spider in the genus Thanatus. They look much the same wherever you find them.
OK, I saved one of my fave shots for last, this time it is an Agapostemon bee sitting in a flower. I just love the colour combinations and the textures.