Brazil

Friday Flower – Hedychium coccineum

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Distrito Joaquim Igidio is one of four “districts” surrounding Campinas, Brazil.  It is the most remote of the four, with farmsteads dating back more than a century interspersed amongst some of the most significant tracts of Atlantic forest still remaining in the area.  Many of the farmsteads have recently been converted to bars and restaurants featuring live music, making the area a popular weekend getaway for Campineros.  I joined my colleague and some of his friends on a visit to one of these—Bar do Cachoeira—over the weekend during my visit this past January.  After a sumputuous lunch of Brazilian cuisine (including tohesmo torresmo—my new favorite dish) and cerveja, I walked the grounds to look for insects to photograph.  Despite only having an hour or so to look around, the two species of treehoppers I found and photographed made it a successful little venture.  Coming back to rejoin my friends, I saw a few plants with these marvelously bizarre inflorescenses growing alongside a forested stream running through the grounds.  I could tell they were some type of monocot, but beyond that I had no idea.  Something inside me suspected, however, that this was likely not a native species—it just had that introduced, tropical ornamental look to it.  My suspicions were confirmed when I showed the photos to Dr. George Yatskievych, Curator at the Missouri Botanical Garden and Director of the Flora of Missouri Project.  George identified the plant as Hedychium in the Zingiberaceae (ginger family), likely one of the cultivars of Hedychium coccineum.  He added:

This species is native to tropical Asia, but is commonly cultivated in warm regions of the world. A number of cultivars and hybrids involving related species are sold, so it’s hard to be sure which one you photographed.  The most common cultivar seems to be cv. ‘Tara’ and that’s a possibility for your plant.

Known by a number of common names (red gingerlilly, orange gingerlily, scarlet gingerlily, orange bottlebrush ginger, etc.), H. coccineum hails from the eastern Himalyas, where it grows along forest edges and in mountain grasslands.  This herbaceous perennial can reach one to two metres in height and, in some places, has become somewhat invasive.  The existence of rhizomes and bulbs can make control particularly difficult.

An interesting feature of the plant is the long, exserted stamens and stigmas of the flowers.  This feature is suggestive of an interesting pollination mechanism that relies on pollen attachment to the wings rather than the main body of its moth and butterfly pollinators. Pollen transfer is effected as the lepidopterans move from flower to flower seeking nectar, brushing their wings against the floral parts in the process and thus pollinating the flowers (Zomlefer 1994).

REFERENCE:

Zomlefer, W. B. 1994. Guide to flowering plant families. University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill, 430 pp.

Copyright © Ted C. MacRae 2011

Brazil Bugs #16 – Outro Percevejo

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Proxys sp. | Barão Geraldo, Campinas, Brazil

Another stink bug (family Pentatomidae) from my recent travels to South America, but this one from southeastern Brazil rather than Argentina.  Although the white spot at the apex of the scutellum is a common theme across the family, the jet black coloration and strongly acute clypeus (“nose”) immediately reminded me of Proxys punctulatus from eastern North America. Although that species does also occur south through Mexico and Central America into northern South America, the lack of distinctively black femoral apices (“knees”) on this individual suggest it is likely a different species.  I’ve not found much information on other species in this genus, as my old standby Flickr repeatedly proffers images of P. punctulatus in its Pentatomidae pages but not other species in the genus.  Grazla and Campos (2010) list P. hastator from “Cayenna” (likely French Guiana) and P. victor from “Brésil,” and an illustration of the latter in the monumental Biologia Centrali-Americana (Distant 1880-1893) agrees reasonably well (but not completely) with this individual.  For now, this will have to stand as Proxys sp.

REFERENCES:

Distant, W. L.  1880-1893.  Biologica Centrali-Americana. Insecta. Rhynchota. Hemiptera-Heteroptera. Volume I.  London: published for the editors by R. H. Porter, 462 pp.

Grazia, J. and L. A. Campos. 2010. Neotropical Pentatomidae (Insecta: Hemiptera: Heteroptera) of the collection of Massimiliano Spinola preserved in the “Museo Regionale de Scienze Naturali”, Turin, Italy. ZOOLOGIA 27(3):413–424.

Copyright © Ted C. MacRae 2011

Brazil Bugs #15 – Formiga-membracídeos mutualismo

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Of the several insect groups that I most wanted to see and photograph during my trip to Brazil a few weeks ago, treehoppers were near the top of the list.  To say that treehoppers are diverse in the Neotropics is certainly an understatement – South America boasts an extraordinary number of bizarre and beautiful forms that still, to this day, leave evolutionary biologists scratching their heads.  The development of this amazing diversity is a relatively recent phenomenon (thinking geological scale here), as there are no known membracid fossils prior to Oligo-Miocene Dominican and Mexican amber – well after the early Cretaceous breakup of Gondwanaland split the globe into the “Old” and “New” Worlds.  With its origins apparently in South America, numerous groups continued to spring forth – each with more ridiculous pronotal modifications than the last and giving rise to the dazzling diversity of forms we see today.  Even North America got in the evolutionary act, benefiting from northern dispersal from South America’s richly developing fauna via temporary land bridges or island stepping stones that have existed at various times during the current era and giving rise to the almost exclusively Nearctic tribe Smiliini (whose species are largely associated with the continent’s eastern hardwood forests).  Only the subfamily Centrotinae, with its relatively unadorned pronotum, managed to successfully disperse to the Old World, where it remains the sole representative taxon in that hemisphere.  With a few notable exceptions, treehoppers have virtually no economic importance whatsoever, yet they enjoy relatively active study by taxonomists, evolutionists, and ecologists alike – due almost completely to the bizarreness of their forms and unique mutualistic/subsocial behaviors.

I did manage to find a few species of treehoppers during the trip (a very primitive species being featured in Answer to ID Challenge #4 – Aetalion reticulatum), and of those that I did find the nymphs in this ant-tended aggregation on a small tree in the rural outskirts of Campinas (São Paulo State) were perhaps the most striking in coloration and form.  Most were jet black, although a few exhibited fair amounts of reddish coloration, and all exhibited sharply defined white bands of wax and long erect processes on the pronotum, mesonotum, and abdomen.  I’ve seen a fair number of treehopper nymphs, but I did not recognize these as something I had seen before, and given the incomplete state of immature taxomony I feared an identification might not be possible.  Still (and I know this is probably beginning to sound like a broken record), I gave it the old college try.

I usually like to start simple and get more creative if the results aren’t satisfactory, so I went to my old friend Flickr and simply typed “Membracidae” as my search term.  Predictably, pages and pages of results appeared, and I began scanning through them to see if any contained nymphs at all resembling what I had.  After just a few pages, I encountered this photo with very similar-looking nymphs, and although no identification beyond family was indicated for the photo, I recognized the lone adult sitting with the nymphs as a member of the tribe Aconophorini – a diverse group distinguished from other treehoppers by their long, forward-projecting pronotal horn.  Luck was with me, because I happen to have a copy of the relatively recent revision of this tribe by Dietrich and Deitz (1991).  Scanning through the work, I learned that the tribe is comprised of 51 species assigned to three genera: Guayaquila (22 spp.), Calloconophora (16 spp.), and Aconophora (13 spp.).  The latter two genera can immediately be dismissed, as ant-interactions have not been recorded for any of the species in those two genera – clearly the individuals that I photographed were being tended by ants.  Further, the long, laterally directed apical processes of the pronotal horn, two pairs of abdominal spines, and other features also agree with the characters given for nymphs of the genus Guayaquila.  In looking at the species included in the genus, a drawing of a nymph that looked strikingly similar to mine was found in the species treatment for G. gracilicornis.  While that species is recorded only from Central America and northern South America, it was noted that nymphs of this species closely resemble those of the much more widely distributed G. xiphias, differing by their generally paler coloration.  My individuals are anything but pale, and reading through the description of the late-instar nymph of the latter species found every character in agreement.  A quick search of the species in Google Images was all that was needed to confirm the ID (at least to my satisfaction). 

In a study of aggregations of G. xiphias on the shrub Didymopanax vinosum (Araliaceae) in southeastern Brazil, Del-Claro and Oliveira (1999) found an astounding 21 species of associated ant species – a far greater diversity than that reported for any other ant-treehopper system.  The most frequently encountered ant species were Ectatomma edentatum, Camponotus rufipes, C. crassus, and C. renggeri, and after perusing the images of these four species at AntWeb I’m inclined to believe that the ants in these photos represent Camponotus crassus (although I am less confident of this ID than the treehoppers – corrections welcome!).  The authors noted turnover of ant species throughout the day in a significant portion of the treehopper aggregations that they observed, which they suggest probably reflects distinct humidity and temperature tolerances among the different ant species and that might serve to reduce interspecific competition among ants at treehopper aggregations.  Since treehopper predation and parasitism in the absence of ant mutualists can be severe, the development of multispecies associations by G. xiphias results in nearly “round-the-clock” protection that can greatly enhance their survival.

Update 3/3/11, 9:45 a.m.:  My thanks to Chris Dietrich at the Illinois Natural History Survey, who provided me in an email exchange some clarifying comments on the origins and subsequent dispersal of the family.  The first paragraph has been slightly modified to reflect those comments.

REFERENCES:

Del-Claro, K. and P. S. Oliveira. 1999. Ant-Homoptera interactions in a Neotropicai savanna: The honeydew-producing treehopper, Guayaquila xiphias (Membracidae), and its associated ant fauna on Didymopanax vinosum (Araliaceae). Biotropica 31(1):135–144.

Dietrich, C. H. and L. L. Deitz.  1991.  Revision of the Neotropical treehopper tribe Aconophorini (Homoptera: Membracidae).  North Carolina Agricultural Research Service Technical Bulletin 293, 134 pp.

Copyright © Ted C. MacRae 2011

Brazil Bugs #14 – Fusquinha

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Despite their hyperdiversity, leaf beetles (family Chrysomelidae) as a group are for the most part among the most easily recognized of all beetle families, and within the family none are more recognizable than the tortoise beetles (subfamily Cassidinae).  Named for their distinctively armoured elytra and prothorax and associated behavior of drawing the head and legs under them when threatened, they are worldwide in distribution and especially diverse in the New World tropics.  Even though I know little about the group (chrysomelids as a whole are far too intimidatingly diverse a group for me to add to my already burgeoning list of interests), I can’t resist collecting them whenever I encounter them.  Having traveled to Mexico and South America many times over the years, I’ve accumulated almost a full Schmidt box of these beauties – most of which remained unidentified, save for the well-known representatives from our relatively depauperate North American fauna.


Thus, when I encountered this striking example on a leaf in the Barão Geraldo District near Campinas, Brazil, I figured the photos I took would go into one of those “Brazil Bugs” posts featuring a variety of pleasing to look at but otherwise unidentified insects.  Still, after having had success identifying some other Brazilian insects using Google, Flickr, and carefully selected search terms, I figured I should at least give this one a try.  It didn’t take long – searching on nothing more than “Cassidinae” in Flickr yielded a very similar looking beetle on page 6 from Panama identified by Rob Westerduijn as Paraselenis tersa.  While not likely the same species, it seemed almost certain to represent the same genus, so further searching on the genus name eventually led me to the cassidine mother lode: Cassidinae of the World: An Interactive Manual.  This web page, authored by Lech Borowiec, features species lists, identification keys and images of a large number of specimens, including nearly all of the 29 species currently placed in this exclusively Neotropical genus (you can bet I’m bookmarking this site – perhaps my Schmidt box of specimens will finally get some attention!).  A quick perusal through the images yielded an ID: Paraselenis (Spaethiechoma) flava, recorded broadly across South America.  Everything fit – the black scutellar marking, the elytra broader than the prothorax, the bicolored antennae, the thin black anterior elytral marginal band, and – appropriate for the species name – the even yellow coloration.  My ID was confirmed when I found a key to all the species of Paraselenis (Borowiec 2003).  I surmise this is a female based on the more rounded humeral elytral projections, which seem to be more strongly and angularly produced in the males based on the photos I looked at.


Interestingly, this particular species is considered a pest of sweet potato and commonly referred to as “fusquinha”¹ (Montes and Raga 2010).  Many species of tortoise beetles, in fact, utilize as host plants members of the sweet potato family (Convolvulaceae).  This individual was not on a convolvulaceous plant, but a small tree.  I looked for additional individuals but didn’t find any, nor did I find larvae or any evidence of feeding, so this must have been a wayward individual – probably searching for a suitable host on which to oviposit.

¹ “Fusquinha” is the Brazilian Portuguese word for “Volkswagon Beetle”!

References

Borowiec, L.  2003.  Two new species of the genus Paraselenis Spaeth, 1913 (Coleoptera: Chrysomelidae: Cassidinae).  Genus 14 (3): 403-411.

Montes, S. M. N. M. and A. Raga. 2010. “Fusquinha” Paraselenis flava (L. 1758) praga da batata-doce. Instituto Biológico – APTA, Documento Técnico 004, 8 pp..

Copyright © Ted C. MacRae 2011

Friday Flower – Orquídea bambu

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I arrived at our facility in Campinas, Brazil just before lunchtime.  I had spent the previous 20 hours on planes, trains, and automobiles (well, not trains), so when my colleague suggested that we take a short walk outside to the campus cafeteria I readily agreed.  Fresh air and at last a taste of that sumptuous Brazilian fare that I love so much sounded like a great idea.  As we walked to the cafeteria, I spotted these orchid blossoms on the tips of tall, reed-like stems growing in beds around the campus grounds… Orchids!  Growing in the ground, outside!  What a beautiful and appropriately tropical welcome to start things off.  I love orchids (and used to maintain a small collection back when I had time for such leisurely pursuits), so I asked my colleague if he knew which it was.  He didn’t, so I studied it carefully trying to remember its features so I could identify it later.  The terrestrial part struck me as a little odd for a Neotropical orchid, and I commented to my colleague that I’d bet it was something introduced from Asia.  That is precisely the case, although it took me a while to figure it out.  My initial Google and Flickr searches using terms such as “Brazil orchid” and the like produced pages and pages of Brazil’s famous diversity of native epiphytic species, but no obvious matches to this terrestrial species.  It later dawned on me that I should conduct my searches in Portuguese, and within the first page or two I found it – the appropriately named bamboo orchid (“orquidea bambusa”), Arundina graminifolia.


I would later see this orchid blooming not only in tended gardens, but from cracks in the pavement between buildings.  Originating from south and southeast Asia, this sole member of the genus is popularly cultivated in gardens across the tropics and has become naturalized in many areas.  Mary Farmer at A Neotropical Savanna has an excellent post on recognition and occurrence of this species in Panama, including detailed discussion and photographs of vegetational and floral morphology and its potential (or lack thereof) for becoming an invasive weed.

Copyright © Ted C. MacRae 2011

Brazil Bugs #13 – Gorgulho do fungo

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Phaenithon semigriseus (Anthribidae) - Parque Municipal, Distrito Barão Geraldo, São Paulo, Brazil. ID by Jose Ricardo M. Mermudes.

Over the weekend during my trip to Brazil last month, I took a walk in the municipal park near my colleague’s home in Barão Geraldo. There was a rather large lake with a walking trail going around it, and although much of the vegetation was planted, there were some less kempt and more native-looking sections along the trail where I hoped to find some insects to photograph. As it turned out, there weren’t a whole lot of interesting insects, but I did see a capybara (“capivara” in Portuguese) – the largest rodent species in the world (picture a guinea pig the size of a small real pig) – for a brief moment before it splashed in alarm into the lake and swam away. One of the few interesting insects I did see was this little fungus weevil (family Anthribidae) on the bark of a large, recently felled tree. At only ~3-4mm in length, it was a rather tiny species as anthribids go – especially in the tropics – and lacked the comically elongated face that some species possess. Still, there is something humorous in its portrait.

Fungus weevils differ from true weevils (family Curculionidae) by having the antennae unelbowed.  I have no clue about the identity of this individual below family level, and there don’t seem to be a whole lot of entomologists that study this group of weevils (should anybody have a clue, please do leave a comment).  I simply must post these photos, however, because I think it is the first time I actually nailed the focus right on the eye with a closeup of this magnitude (~3X).  I actually took some closer shots also (in the 4X range), but I really didn’t care for the composition with the lens zoomed in to that degree.

Update 02/17/11, 9:53 a.m.: I just received an email from Jose Ricardo M. Mermudes (Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro), who informs me that the species is Phaenithon semigriseus (Germar, 1824). It would seem that this photo at Coleoptera Neotropical has, until now, been the only image of this species on the web.

My thanks to Dr. Mermudes! 

Copyright © Ted C. MacRae 2011

Answers to ID Challenge #5 – Artrópodes em casca de árvore morta

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Dead tree in Campinas, Brazil

After checking into my hotel in Campinas, Brazil I couldn’t wait to start exploring the grounds to see what insect life I might be able to find.  Almost immediately, I encountered this dead tree in back of the hotel.  To a beetle collector, a dead tree is an irresistible draw – especially one that is still standing and with loosely hanging bark, as in this one.  I approached the tree, gave it a look up and down the trunk to see if any beetles or other insects might be found on the outer surface of the bark, and when none were seen began carefully peeling sections of the bark away from the trunk.  Out from beneath the first section darted a small, black lizard – it reminded me in general form of our North American fence lizards (genus Sceloporus), but honestly it darted so fast up the trunk that I didn’t get a good look at it (much less even the chance to attempt a photograph).  Peeling the bark further away from the wood revealed a goodly number of what I took to be beetle larvae, although they were unlike anything I’d ever seen before.  They were fairly good-sized – about 25mm in length, and although there are a number of beetle families whose larvae may be encountered under the bark of dead trees, there aren’t many with larvae of this size.

Coleopteran larva (Tenebrionidae?) under bark of dead tree.

Despite their odd appearance, their basic gestalt suggested to me that they might be something in the family Tenebrionidae (darkling beetles).  Sadly, the state of beetle larval taxonomy is far from complete, especially in the tropics, and given the extraordinary diversity of the order as a whole I knew it could be difficult to impossible to identify them.  This task was further complicated by the fact that I did not collect any voucher specimens.¹

¹ Insect collecting permits are required in Brazil and are exceedingly difficult to obtain.  Although enforcement is lax, a few unlucky foreigners have been caught and suffered tremendous inconvenience at the hands of notoriously unsympathetic authorities.  This being a business trip, I had no desire to tempt fate for the sake of a few larvae in a group I don’t even study.

Despite a millipede-like appearance, six legs and loose cluster of ocelli indicate its true identity.

After consulting all of the print and online resources at my disposal and failing to find a convincing match at even the family level, I began to second guess not only whether these were tenebrionids, but larvae or even beetles.  I’m not aware of any tenebrionids with larviform adult females, but such are common in the Lampyroidea.  That didn’t seem to fit, however, as the latter tend to be much more flattened and armored in appearance, and the round head is really unlike the elongate and narrow head so often seen in that group.  The actually began to wonder if it was even a beetle – most xylophagous beetle larvae are light-colored and rarely so heavily sclerotized, and the antennae are unlike the typical 3-segmented antennae seen with most xylophagous beetle larvae.  In fact, the antennae and the shape of the head actually reminded me of a millipede, but the obvious presence of six legs (and no more) made this untenable (even though 1st instar millipedes are hexapod, the large size of these individuals precludes them from being 1st instar anything).  Eventually, I could only conclude that they were coleopteran – possibly a larviform adult, but more likely larval.  As a last resort I sent photos to Antonio Santos-Silva, a coleopterist at the University of São Paulo.  Although he specializes in Cerambycidae, I reasoned this might be a fairly common species since I had found good numbers on a single tree in an urban area near São Paulo, and as such it might be something he would recognize.  Antonio quickly replied saying that he agreed it was the larva of a species of Tenebrionidae, with an appearance similar to the larvae of Goniodera ampliata (a member of the Lagriinae, formerly considered a separate family).  I’ve not been able to find photos of the larva of Goniadera or related genera, but these do bear a striking (if more glabrous) resemblance to these presumed tenebrionid larvae from Australia.  Until a more convincing opinion is forthcoming, Tenebrionidae seems to be the consensus.

Polyxenid millipedes and two types of Collembola (several Poduromorpha and one Entomobryomorpha)

Three tiny adult coleopterans (family?) surround a large larval coleopteran

Although nobody zeroed in on Tenebrionidae for this challenge (#5 in the ID Challenge series), I must say that I enjoyed the diversity of opinion about what it might represent.  Moreover, congratulations to those who ‘took nothing for granted’ and noted the presence of several other organisms in the photo – this is where the big points were to be earned, and several participants successfully ID’d what I take to be a number of poduromorph collembolans, a single entomobryomorph collembolan, a central cluster of polyxenid millipedes, and several indistinct but clearly coleopteran adults (see super crops above).  David Hubble got the most correct answers to earn 15 points and the win in this inaugural post of BitB Challenge Season #2, while Dave and Troy Bartlett earned 13 and 10 points, respectively, to complete the podium.  Seven other participants got in on the fun and earned some points – I hope you’ll join the fun next time, too!

Copyright © Ted C. MacRae 2011

Brazil Bugs #12 – Desafio de identificação #5

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Here we go again – 2 pts each for any correct taxon name up to and including order and any supporting information you can provide.  Standard ID Challenge rules apply.  Hint: don’t take anything for granted – this one is going to separate the men/women from the boys/girls!

Edit 2/11/11, 8:32 a.m.: I should probably make points available for class as well (with the caveat that those with comments already in queue will get credit if due – no need to recomment unless you want to add something).  Also, we’ve had enough of these by now to know that common names and “taxon by implication” generally yield fewer points than correctly presented scientific names. 🙂

Copyright © Ted C. MacRae 2011