The word beetle comes from the Anglo-Saxon bitan, meaning to bite, and a sight of the sharp sickle-shaped mandibles of a tiger beetle (Cicindellidae) or the toothed pincer-like jaws of a ground beetle (Carabidae) easily reveals how that name came about. Beetles, formally known as Coleoptera (“shield-wing”, a reference to the glossy sheaths formed by their hardened forewings) outnumber us feeble mammals by a long shot. Current estimates say there are as many as 50 times more species of beetles than of mammals, and that gap widens each year as new beetle species are described. Such diversity—from minuscule (a 0.3 mm featherwing beetle) to huge (a 17 cm Hercules beetle); terrestrial to semi-aquatic and aquatic; plant chewers to meat-eaters; dung movers, corpse recyclers, and more—can lead to mixed feelings about beetles on the part of humans. However, there is one group of beetles that just about everyone loves—the lady beetles (Coccinellidae).  

If you live in the USA, you are more likely to refer to lady beetles as ladybugs, but the obsessive taxonomist that lurks within all entomologists compels us to spoil your fun and remind you that “all bugs are insects, but not all insects are bugs”. In the UK, the more whimsical common term of “ladybird” is used, though the mediaeval Christian symbology conferred onto ladybirds provided additional common names such as the evocative but perplexing “God’s little cow”. Lady beetles continue to have a strong hold on modern minds; as a child, I remember an obligation to recite the ditty “ladybug, ladybug, fly away home, your house is on fire, your children are gone”, which with the bloody-mindedness of youth I never questioned (though I did wonder why lady beetles above all others of their kin were so doomed to flaming immolation).

Lady beetles have an advantage in that they are undeniably cute—round and chubby, brightly colored and patterned, they seem hapless and charming as they doodle along in our gardens.  They are small enough not to be frightening, and if they do occasionally ooze odorous yellowish fluid from their leg joints upon being handled, what’s a little reflexive bleeding among friends? However, no amount of cuteness will get an insect very far if it isn’t accompanied by some sort of usefulness, and the lady beetle’s sweet appearance is really just a facade, as any aphid will tell you. North America is home to around 500 species of lady beetles, and most are voracious predators on aphids, mealybugs, scale insects, and other soft-bodied insects that plague gardeners and farmers. Lady beetle larvae, which emerge from small clusters of oval orange eggs laid on the undersides of leaves, appear startlingly different than the adults, looking more like tiny orange-and-black alligators covered with warts or branched spines. The larvae feed and grow through four stages (instars) before pupating on leaf surfaces and emerging as adults. Adults often hibernate through the winter in large aggregations in sheltered areas, and it’s not unusual for home gardeners to find a bright cluster of awakening lady beetles underneath a wad of leaf litter in spring.

The ability of lady beetle larvae and adults to consume large numbers of pest insects has given them an exalted status as biological control agents, but unfortunately, their appeal as beneficial insects has also led to the downfall of several of our native species. Many species from other countries have been imported for use as biocontrol agents against crop pests in North America. One of the best-known stories is that of the Vedalia Beetle (Rodolia cardinalis), a coccinellid brought in from Australia in the 1890s to control the cottony-cushion scale insect (Icerya purchasi) that was devastating California’s citrus crops. According to Marshall (2006), 179 species of lady beetle have been imported into North America as biological control agents, and several, along with additional unintentional imports, have become established. In my own garden, the native Convergent Lady Beetle (Hippodamia convergens), so-named for the angled white lines on the pronotum, is outnumbered by the Seven-Spotted Lady Beetle (Coccinella septempunctata), a European import; in the east, this species is thought to have largely ousted the native Nine-spotted Lady Beetle (C. novemnotata). And if there is one lady beetle that everyone loves to hate, it’s the imported Multicolored Asian Lady Beetle (Harmonia axyridis), which varies from pale orange to bight red, with many to no spots, but which can always be distinguished by the blotchy black “M” marking on its white pronotum. The Multicolored Asian Lady Beetle has an unfortunate tendency to invade people’s houses in the fall in search of hibernation sites, where the chemicals they secrete as a defense mechanism stain walls and furniture. During large outbreaks they may feed on and damage fruit crops such as grapes, a very un-lady(beetle)-like behavior, and when their secretions are left on grape skins they can cause an off-flavor in the resulting wine.

It’s human nature to be eager for the end of winter, no matter how much we enjoy it for a while, and everyone has their own talismans of reassurance that Spring is really on its way. For some, it’s the appearance of a particular migrating bird, or the first snowdrops to push their tough white flowers above the ice and mud. For myself, I can be sure that spring is safely on its way when I see the first bumblebee of the season. In my area, that’s usually the Black-tail Bumble Bee, known more formally as Bombus melanopygus.  

In the wake of Colony Collapse Disorder, the European honey bee (Apis mellifera) has become something of a household name, but the diverse array of native bees in North America has received shorter shrift. That’s a pity because most are lovely, charming, beneficial little insects, and none more so than the bumble bee (genus Bombus). The charm of the bumble bee is aptly reflected in the diverse array of common names attached to it, which include dusty miller, droner, humble bee, and, much to the delight of Harry Potter aficionados, dumbledore. Many of these names refer to the noise made by these big fuzzy bees; to “bumble” used to mean to drone or buzz, and the sight of a fluffy bumble bee is invariably accompanied by its loud droning hum. Even those who suffer from melissophobia (the official term for a fear of bees) can relax around bumble bees, as their mild dispositions live up to their teddy bear appearance. Bumble bees are social insects, like their imported honey bee cousins, but their colonies are small (ranging from ~50-800 bees) and only last one year. With no hive full of honey to protect, bumblebees are less territorial and aggressive than honey bees, and I have held many a bumble cupped in my palms with no fear of being stung (which is not to say a sting is impossible, especially if you wander unwittingly too near a colony while mowing the lawn or weed-whacking).  

Bumble bees are usually the first bees on the wing in spring and the last ones flying in the fall. Virgin queens mate at the end of summer, then spend the winter in hibernation. That new queen never needs to mate again; she will use the stored sperm to fertilize eggs that hatch into her daughters, and she will also lay some unfertilized eggs that develop into males. These young queens awaken in Spring, their fuzzy black-and-yellow or -orange coats providing insulation that enables them to be active on days that are too cold and damp for honey bees to forage. Once she finds a dry, sheltered cavity to serve as a home for her soon-to-be-growing family, she gets down to the business of provisioning the nest, making small wax pots which she fills with the nectar and pollen she gathers. She lays her first batch of eggs, and uses her own body to keep the temperature warm enough for the developing embryos. She continues her solitary maternal care of this brood, feeding and tending the larvae until they pupate and the first generation of daughters emerges and takes over in caring for subsequent batches of sisters. With just the queen to tend their needs, this first generation is usually smaller in size than their mother, but as the queen continues to lay fertilized eggs, there are more daughters to provide forage for the larvae that develop throughout the summer. This is no small task, as laboratory studies have found that a nest of 100 bumble bees can consume up to 2 g (0.07 oz) of pollen and 40 mL (1.4 oz) of sugar syrup daily!  At the end of summer, the old queen lays some eggs that develop into new young queens, as well as some unfertilized eggs that develop into males that quickly fly off to find mates of their own. The old queen dies and the new virgin queens make their mating flights and then hibernate through the winter, to await the following spring.

Bumble bees are fun to watch and easy to observe because you can generally get up close and personal without risking being stung. I never harvest my artichokes because the bumbles (and other bees) love to forage in the huge purple flowers, and the rosemary and lavender that line my walkway form a backdrop for the ceaseless bee-thrum that to me is one of the integral sounds of summer. Their buzzing hum has practical applications as well; bumble bees are superior pollinators of some plants due to their ability to perform buzz pollination, which involves using their flight muscles to shake their entire body. The resulting vibrations help release the pollen from some plants, and it isn’t unusual while walking through one’s garden to be startled by a surprisingly loud “zzzzttt!” coming from a wildly shaking tomato or blueberry flower.

There are about 40 species of bumble bee in North America, but several have experienced serious declines due to pesticide use, habitat loss, and disease. Supporting your local bees isn’t that hard to do; just plant a patch of organically-maintained habitat that provides bloom from early spring through fall and watch how the bumbles and other native bees respond. And if you would like to contribute data from your own pollinator patch to larger studies on the status of bees in North America, check out the Great Sunflower Project (greatsunflower.org) to get involved in the Great Backyard Bee Count and find field guides (including guides to bumble bees of the eastern and western United States), image galleries, and information about the life history of bumble bees and other native bees.

Several weeks ago I spent a typical Portland winter morning (i.e. grey, drizzling, and chilly) participating in a local Friends’ group volunteer event to pull weeds along a restored stretch of an urban stream.  Most of the weeds plaguing this site are non-native invasive species that either successfully resisted previous removal efforts or crept back after restoration.  Every state is cursed with its own particular rogue’s gallery of invasives, and the ones we fight here in Oregon include Himalayan blackberry (Rubus armeniacus), English ivy (Hedera spp.), English holly (Ilex aquifolium), and the plant that really puts the “noxious” into noxious weed, reed canarygrass (Phalaris arundinacea).
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Himalayan blackberry was introduced as a crop plant from Europe in the 19th century, and it certainly provides an abundance of tasty fruit, but it’s also armed with flesh-shredding thorns that make it a plant equivalent of the Wolverine, and it grows so quickly and in such impenetrable tangled mats that it out-competes every other plant in the understory.  English ivy is a regrettable ornamental with little habitat value that also escaped cultivation and spread rapidly as a habitat-choking groundcover and a vine that can cloak shrubs so throughly they may eventually die because sunlight can’t reach their leaves.  English holly, another European escapee, is beloved by birds for its bright red berries, which are also unfortunately carried into forests where they give rise to dense thickets that suppress germination and growth of native shrubs and trees.  Reed canarygrass, a perennial that grows 3-6 feet tall in crowded monocultures, is a major threat to northwestern wetland ecosystems that resists removal by heavy machinery (copious seeds and rhizomes simply grow back) and various herbicides (control is effective only for a few years, after which treated areas are re-invaded)

Controlling invasive species, especially in urban areas that experience continuing disturbance and high visitation by humans and pets that spread seeds and propagules, is an ongoing and often contentious issue.  Use herbicides as a necessary evil to knock back the invasives and hope the natives thrive? Go organic instead and find enough willing volunteers (which in Portland often includes goats, who eagerly consume Himalayan blackberry) to keep invasives under control long enough for newly-planted natives to gain a root-hold?  This dilemma drifted through my mind as I stood on the bank of a creek that just five years ago had a terribly degraded riparian zone, consisting of a few scattered cedar trees surrounded by a sea of reed canarygrass and ivy.  Now I gazed out on a vastly different scene, a functional riparian zone dominated by native plants, where tumbles of jewelweed edged banks shaded by red osier dogwood, willow, and alder.  Invasives persist, though in much lower numbers, primarily in patches where native plantings failed (or were chewed to nubs by urban beavers) or where restoration was not yet complete.  I went to work on one of these patches, standing in several inches of cold water while slamming a pickax into a clump of reed canarygrass clinging stubbornly to the bank.  After several minutes of vigorous pickax application I managed to hack loose a few square inches of the dense root mass, which repaid my efforts by spattering me thoroughly with icy mud as I heaved the startlingly heavy weight up onto the walkway for disposal.  

As I stood in the rain trying to recover enough feeling in my fingers to wipe the mud off my glasses, the head of the Friends group remarked that reed canarygrass had been awful originally, covering the banks and spilling into large mats in the stream itself.  When I asked what nuclear device had been deployed to knock the pestiferous plant back to its current low levels, she replied that it was done entirely by groups of volunteers who waded into the river with knives and axes, chopping the mats free and hauling them to shore for disposal.  I felt a little thunderstruck as I did some mental calculations to scale up the effort needed to remove a single chunk of this weed, and then I realized—this is why I volunteer.  Groundwater is being pumped dry, wetlands are being filled and degraded, rivers are being dammed and polluted, endemic insect species are going extinct as I type this, and in the course of my life, I can only only stem the tide of destruction for what feels like an increasingly and depressingly tiny proportion of the planet.  But “action is the antidote to despair”, as Joan Baez is credited with having said, and here and now in my own watershed, I can straighten my aching back, blink sweat and rain out of my eyes, and share some scones with a small group of people looking out contentedly on a patch of habitat that we made better for the wildlife and people who live here now, and for a generation to come.

After years of living all over the USA, I am fortunate to have fetched up in the Pacific Northwest. Every place has its beauties, of course, but the northwest is endlessly appealing, from the rich palette of the Painted Desert, the mossy cascades of the Columbia Gorge, and the murre-speckled sea stacks of the Pacific coast. But while I appreciate my proximity to breathtaking vistas and wild ocean shores, I also try to always be alert to the possibility of natural wonder in the city I live in.

Nature—the kind of nature to be conserved, restored, and marveled at—is often perceived as something far from one’s home, a place that requires a long drive with a carful of gear to get to.  But a visit to that type of “nature” may only happen a few times in someone’s life, if it occurs at all, and the daily view of nature for most of us has a lot more buildings and fewer mountain vistas. US Census data from 2010 showed over 80% of Americans living in urban areas; according to the World Health Organization, the urban population in 2014 accounted for 54.5% of the total global population, and is expected to grow 1.84% annually between 2015 and 2020. One of the many environmental challenges created by this continuing urbanization is finding ways to give people from all walks of life direct and meaningful interactions with nature on a regular basis.

As an entomologist, I find this task a little easier, because there are insects in pretty much every habitat you can imagine. I am a great believer in the role that urban habitats can play in providing refuge and connectivity for wildlife, and in the power of the public to enhance urban habitats and learn about biodiversity in the process. I have seen my own tiny backyard in Portland go from a lifeless expanse of sod (the legacy of previous owners) to a bird-rich haven of native shrubs where chickadees and goldfinches pick over sunflower heads while ground-based varied thrushes and juncos hunt for tidbits in the mulch and red-shafted flickers and cedar waxwings gobble an annual bounty of blue elderberries overhead. But even I fall into the trap of thinking that urban nature can get a little ho-hum, compared to the glories of a peat bog or mountain meadow, and the occasional wake-up call is needed.

My most recent “ah-hah!’ moment in this arena came last summer, when I volunteered to help with a bioblitz done to celebrate the grand opening of a new park in northeast Portland, in a neighborhood the city determined was lacking in green space. Named Kʰunamokwst, from a word in the Chinook Wawa language meaning “together”, this pocket park was created on a forgotten patch in the middle of a historically underserved and minority neighborhood with dense residential and commercial development. The “critter cruise”, as it was dubbed, featured naturalist-led walks for residents, with a strong focus on young children and their families. When I arrived in the morning and saw the small size of the park and the large number of surrounding houses, I confess my spirits sank a bit at the thought of filling three hours with observations of insects and other invertebrates. How on earth would I find enough to keep these kids interested?

As it turned out, my worries were unfounded, and I discovered two very important things that day. The first is that nature walks with children are terrific, because I didn’t have to do any work—I just turned the kids loose and they spent the whole time questing like beagles and running up to me with their finds. The second is that even the common is wondrous if it’s something you’ve never seen before. Mysterious monsters on a leaf brought to me by a small girl led to the discovery of lady beetle larvae, and a challenge to the group to see if they could find more lady beetle life stages. Within minutes I had a neat line-up of larvae, pupae, and adults, and a great jumping-off point for an impromptu teaching moment about metamorphosis as well as biological control. A boy showed me a round and lovely Cross Orb Weaver (Araneus diadematus) cupped in his palm, and I was able to compare and contrast his spider with a harvestman running around in another small participant’s hands—and to reassure his mother, who approached me with a rather less enthusiastic demeanor asking anxiously “¿Son peligrosos?” that the vast majority of Oregon’s hundreds of spider species are harmless.

It pays to remember too that the wondrous may well be lurking unexpectedly amidst the common—especially where insects, so perennially understudied and unappreciated, are concerned. For example, a recent community-based bioblitz in Melbourne, Australia uncovered several rare moth species that hadn't been sighted in decades in the city’s most-visited park, and last spring 30 new species of scuttle fly (Phoridae: Megaselia) were discovered living in Los Angeles county, many in people’s backyards.  

​The American naturalist John Burroughs said "The place to study nature is at one's own home - on the farm, in the mountains, by the sea - wherever that may be.” In this spirit, my own quest for the coming year is to try to find and catalog every invertebrate that lives in my yard, from compost pile to mulched path to the underside of my lawn chair.  Who knows what wonders may await?