11 ms·

I've seen an amazing variety of bees and wasps since we planted a native wildflower garden. They may not be unknown to science but most are new to me and they s

I've seen an amazing variety of bees and wasps since we planted a native wildflower garden. They may not be unknown to science but most are new to me and they seem to change very few weeks, depending on what's blooming.

jonah 2y ago
That's a wonderful thing you did - it's helping the bees and other pollinators and bringing you enjoyment. To anyone else wanting to do similar - PLEASE be sure to plant only species and varieties native to YOUR area. It's much more beneficial all around than random "wildflowers" that are native to who knows where.
- cmrdporcupine 2y ago
  Honestly, it's mostly a lost cause and maybe a dubious one, if you walk into any woods or meadow in the northeast you'll find "invasive" species everywhere... and native pollinators all over them. Actively suppressing those non-natives may actually do more harm than good. My little hobby farm is covered in invasive comfrey, a non-native variety of it ("Russian" comfrey, a wild hybrid.) Anywhere I don't mow, it pops up. It blooms all season, little pink flowers full of nectar. The native bumble bees go crazy for it. (photo: https://www.instagram.com/p/C79PJpdRzuD/ https://www.instagram.com/p/C79PJpdRzuD/) Native plants are great, but there's a lot to pick apart in the native-vs-invasives narrative. It's really not that black and white. EDIT: the reverse is also true... European honeybees go completely bonkers for the (very native) goldenrod that is all over the place right now. Makes great photos (https://www.instagram.com/p/C_WAGSmxs0K/?img_index=1 https://www.instagram.com/p/C_WAGSmxs0K/?img_index=1)
  - seanw444 2y ago
    Also, "invasive" has gained the connotation of "bad" for some reason, as though regions and their flora/fauna do not change and have not changed over time. Species invade. Such is the ecosystem.
    - cmrdporcupine 2y ago
      Definitely. Obviously the rate of change is crazy higher than anything pre-anthropocene but... but it's more broadly just part of biology. imho there's a kind of unfortunate essentialist philosophy which runs rampant among some "ecologists" and which has seeped into the public sphere... which believes that "nature" is a self-balancing system, and it is only our interference (as something "outside" nature) that breaks this. And this gets tied into the "natives" vs "invasives" dialog, as well. I think this is profoundly wrong. Nature is chaos. (Said in Werner Herzog voice, or something). Consider that the ice age only ended just over 10,000 years ago -- which is an extremely short time ago in geological and evolutionary terms -- and every forest, meadow or natural space you see in (temperate North America and Europe at least) is very new and was "invaded" after the glaciers melted and as the climate warmed. In some cases quite recently.
      - tway_GdBRwW 2y ago
        As you point out, the problem is that the rate of change is crazy higher than what almost all multi-celled life is used to. I'm on board with your view that we are a part of nature, not separate, but when I think of previous speed-ups in rate of change (i.e. sexual selection to allow more rapid gene reshuffling, or epigenetic modification which allows more flexibility from the same genes) these have been spread across multiple species. The acceleration we are currently seeing is basically due to the industrial revolution, which is due to people finding an net energy positive fuel source and leveraging this. Nature is a chaotic system, yes, but chaotic systems have balance and tend to have semi-regular orbits. By so drastically changing the rate of change past what any other living thing can match, we are on course to push the system into a new regime. Which is unlikely to be as pleasant as the one we currently enjoy.
        cmrdporcupine 2y ago
        I mean, see my point above about rate of change following the end of the ice ages. The part of North America I'm in, it's actually really young in evolutionary terms. And was really in constant intense flux even prior to European settlement. And the locals here (Anishinaabe and Iriquois) also intervened heavily with fire and planting for thousands of years, too. More broadly we're committing ecocide in much more terrible ways. All that said, I tend to plant natives because they're usually (but not always) better adapted. Apples, I had to spray the crap out of and cut all of mine down. Pawpaws? Took care of themselves. Inter-specific "hybrid" grapes (with North American vitis ancestry) require almost no spraying, while v. vinifera is weak and requires constant intervention (I also do my own grape breeding). I had dwarf sour cherries bred in western Canada, and they can't handle the heat and humidity here. Native black cherry grows fantastic (I've thought about trying to breed with it). However here's the thing. Among native plant advocates there's this kind of schizo thing. On one hand we're supposed to plant natives because they're better adapted for our environment. On the other hand we're supposed to root out the invasives because they're out-competing the natives and pushing them out. Huh? Which is it? Adapted for this place, or too weak to thrive in this place? I'm not the first to point this out.
  - Spivak 2y ago
    Yep, I have a huge native plant garden and some non-native basil I've let flower and the native garden might as well not exist to the bees. There's 10-15 bees on the basil from sunup to sundown.
    - cmrdporcupine 2y ago
      Aside: I planted a "columnar" basil this year I got from a local grower. Not sure of species, etc but small little leaves, seems way more drought and heat tolerant (I've completely neglected it) and one thing that's great about it is that it seems to just.. not... go to seed and flower. I always end up with too much basil and it goes bonkers all over the garden. Pine nuts and parmesan are way too expensive to make pesto at any quantity to keep up with the basil.
      - a012 2y ago
        Basil is kinda weed for me too, but they attract a lot of bees and others as well. One day I saw a dragonfly was casually chewing a bee head …
        cmrdporcupine 2y ago
        Dragonflies have been completely off the charts at my farm this year! So amazing. I'm guessing it's because the mosquitoes were really bad. The swallows were also bonkers in August. I'd look out my office window here over the front of my property and it was a swarm of both, feeding frenzy for bugs (I assume mosquitoes)
      - hansvm 2y ago
        - You can make some tasty pesto-like dishes with other nuts. Walnut is nice with a little less cheese and more lemon. Pistachio is good too, and you can cut the parmesan with 50% extra-sharp white cheddar to reduce costs. None of those sorts of alternatives are the same, but they're good and can be used similarly. - Basil is just another mint and works well with similar pairings. A basil-watermelon salad, or basil-cucumber infused water are nice summery treats. - If you ever make cocktails for your friends, you can preserve an awful lot of basil in a homemade simple syrup. It pairs nicely with lemon, and an easy thing to get started with would be a lemon basil vodka martini. - Pizza dough is much easier and cheaper to make than people give it credit for (and it's better as it ferments longer, just throw it in the fridge when you're done, and it'll be ready for 3-10 days when you need it, cutting down the latency between starting cooking and finishing dinner). Garlic powder and fresh herbs take it up a notch. - You can cook up a ton of basil with some shallots, hot red peppers, and a few other things to make a thick, herby, sweet, spicy sauce to serve with rice (basil in this preparation will be whole leaves and is the star of the dish). And so on. I think you'd struggle to use more than 10-20 leaves per day in a family of 2-4, so preservation techniques (canned sauces, frozen cubes of basil, ...) might still be important, but there are tons of options.
  - jonah 2y ago
    Many invasives are everywhere, indeed. But I don't think it's necessary to be fatalistic about it. My point, though, is that if you are actively planting things, you should use ones that are endemic to your area. And why not, you're tipping the scales ever so slightly towards the natives. We hike a lot, usually twice a weekend, and whenever we can, we pull an invasive tansy which is hepatoxic to deer and other native animals. Since we started this practice a couple years ago, there seems to be a noticeable reduction of tansy along our more frequented trails. Another non-native around here is a European beachgrass which early settlers planted to "stabilize" the sand dunes along beaches. It has done that for sure but has also taken over and become a monoculture and destroyed the dune dynamics and crowded out all the native plants. It's extremely hard to remove and require either a lot of hand digging or herbicide application. Over many years of work, the situation is improving though.
  - tinyplanets 2y ago
    There is a large body of peer-reviewed research showing the enormous damage that invasives species to do ecosystems. Pollinators will use non-native species if they don't have anything else available, but pollinator diversity and abundance is always less than what you'd find in a native-dominated plant assemblage.
- persnickety 2y ago
  How do I even find this out? When I ask the search engine about native plants in the nearest metropoly, closest I get is someone selling seed packs, without any clear scientific basis for their being native.
  - nullindividual 2y ago
    Your local university should have a horticulture department with a list. A nursery not attached to a grocery or hardware store will likely have a list as well. Usually they will label the origin of each plant.
    - drewcoo 2y ago
      In the US, the state school with the best engineering programs will also be the one with the agriculture focus. There are also plant/seed vendors who can tell you about what they sell that's native where you live. Like this (scroll down to see map!): https://www.everwilde.com/store/Nelumbo-lutea-WildFlower-Seed.html https://www.everwilde.com/store/Nelumbo-lutea-WildFlower-See...
  - steve_adams_86 2y ago
    My city has a designated group of people focused on ecological restoration of all sorts of public spaces. They’re called the “Parks Service” which doesn’t fully entail their role, but they’re all very experienced and educated regarding local native ecology. I was surprised we have this, so you might as well. I only discovered it because I volunteer to help restore public spaces and had the good fortune of meeting the city’s team on one occasion. They’re awesome. I wish I’d known sooner. It’s an incredible resource to have.
  - macintux 2y ago
    There's probably a local organization dedicated to native plants. In Indiana, for example: https://indiananativeplants.org https://indiananativeplants.org
  - pvaldes 2y ago
    Is easier than ever to identify a plant with internet, but some time ago people bough handbooks that provided decades of joy and discoveries. Support the writers that provide a better experience showing you the whole picture instead a small piece without context.
- doublerabbit 2y ago
  I'm a committee to volunteer looking after a graveyard down the road from me. We've just gained permission from the city council that we can make adaptions to the landscape including planting floral life that encourage wildlife, Bird boxes and Bat Boxes are allowed too. Sort of excited as this ties in to my life dream of having an animal sanctuary.
- anthomtb 2y ago
  > PLEASE be sure to plant only species and varieties native to YOUR area. It's much more beneficial all around than random "wildflowers" I get the sentiment but the swarm of bees* on my Russian sage, some 9000km away from Moscow, makes one wonder about this advice. *all sorts, not only European honeybees
  - danparsonson 2y ago
    The problem is that non-native species, planted with the best of intentions, can become invasive and choke out native populations. See for example the Buddleia, which in the UK was often lauded as 'the butterfly bush' and which is now a massive nuisance across the nations railways and wildlife reserves.
    - macintux 2y ago
      Similarly, birds love Asian honeysuckle in the U.S., but the fruit is basically sugar water and the plant aggressively crowds out most native plants.
      - foobarian 2y ago
        I love the scent of honeysuckle. It makes it hard to know that it's invasive because I'd love to have it around the house.
    - pfdietz 2y ago
      I have Buddleia in my garden (which otherwise has a native focus). It's not at all invasive where I am, in upstate NY, probably due to the cold winters. In a colder winter it dies back to the roots and may not survive at all. Now, purple loosestrife is still all over, despite the biocontrol. And don't get me started about Phragmites or Alliaria petiolata (garlic mustard).
  - vharuck 2y ago
    I figure that native plants give an edge to native pollinators. The explosion of spotted lantern flies shows how non-native plants can make things worse. Also, I'm ignorant when it comes to ecology. So I won't pretend to know how many roles a native plant plays throughout its lifecycle, let alone which non-native plants can fit those roles while looking pretty.
nullindividual 2y ago
I did the same. Ripped up my grass lawn and replaced with lavender, clover, roses, etc. Not only does it look better, but it’s less maintenance. I had a variety of bees, butterflies, and Anna’s Hummingbirds visit this year. It was a treat to watch!
aredox 2y ago
Flowers are one thing, but what stops many species from coming back is the lack of free-flowing rivers and the mud they need to dig or build their nests.
- cmrdporcupine 2y ago
  Yeah that and piles of decaying brush / wood / sticks, etc. (E.g. carpenter bees).
  - AlexandrB 2y ago
    We intentionally keep a bunch of decaying logs and sticks in our yard for this purpose. I also accidentally left out a 2x4s we pulled out of an old wall (thus full of nail holes). Almost every hole, big or small, now has some kind of cap from solitary bees laying their eggs in it.
throwanem 2y ago
> They may not be unknown to science You might be surprised. If it's something you want to pursue, or just for general interest, iNaturalist and its related Seek app are the best places I know to start - if it's common, they'll tell you what it is; if not, there's nowhere better in the world for an entomological layperson to reach those who might be able to say - or who might be very interested in the fact that they can't!
- tzs 2y ago
  I was astonished when I read "Life on a Little Known Planet: A Biologist's View of Insects and Their World" [1]. The author was an entomologist who was one of the world's foremost experts on parasitic wasps. He'd put out traps to catch flying insects at his home over the summer in, if I recall correctly, New England, and often find ones that he didn't recognize. He'd even find parasitic wasps he didn't recognize. Upon further checking he'd find that many of these were unknown to science. I'd always thought that if you wanted to find insects unknown to science you'd have to go to isolated areas that had not been well explored. There was a good illustration in the book of how little we know. There was some invasive insect that was causing a lot of damage to California orange crops [2]. The invasive insect was native to Florida. In Florida its population was kept under control by a species of parasitic wasps that laid their eggs in its larvae which became wasp food before they could mature and start attacking the orange crop. A lot of money was spent to import those wasps into California and release them. This kind of biological pest control is attractive because parasites are often very specific about what species they will use as a host, which was the case with these wasps, so this should be safe as far as species other than the invasive one are concerned. The parasites aren't going to switch to some native host. They were correct in that the parasites didn't go after anything else, so caused no harm. But they also didn't go after the invasive insect. They just didn't lay eggs and died off. Eventually someone figured out why it hadn't worked. It turned out that what we had thought was a species of invasive insect turned out to be two very closely related species, call them A and B. The parasitic wasp species that laid eggs in their larvae also turnout out to be two species. One of the wasp species laid eggs in A larvae, and only A larvae, and the in B larvae, and only B larvae. All the invaders in California were from A, and all the wasps they trapped in Florida and sent to California were from the species that lays eggs in B. [1] https://www.amazon.com/Life-Little-Known-Planet-Biologists/dp/1558212493 https://www.amazon.com/Life-Little-Known-Planet-Biologists/d... [2] I read the book a long time ago. I may be misremembering the specific crop, and the specific types of insects involved.

jonah 2y ago

That's a wonderful thing you did - it's helping the bees and other pollinators and bringing you enjoyment. To anyone else wanting to do similar - PLEASE be sure to plant only species and varieties native to YOUR area. It's much more beneficial all around than random "wildflowers" that are native to who knows where.

cmrdporcupine 2y ago
Honestly, it's mostly a lost cause and maybe a dubious one, if you walk into any woods or meadow in the northeast you'll find "invasive" species everywhere... and native pollinators all over them. Actively suppressing those non-natives may actually do more harm than good. My little hobby farm is covered in invasive comfrey, a non-native variety of it ("Russian" comfrey, a wild hybrid.) Anywhere I don't mow, it pops up. It blooms all season, little pink flowers full of nectar. The native bumble bees go crazy for it. (photo: https://www.instagram.com/p/C79PJpdRzuD/ https://www.instagram.com/p/C79PJpdRzuD/) Native plants are great, but there's a lot to pick apart in the native-vs-invasives narrative. It's really not that black and white. EDIT: the reverse is also true... European honeybees go completely bonkers for the (very native) goldenrod that is all over the place right now. Makes great photos (https://www.instagram.com/p/C_WAGSmxs0K/?img_index=1 https://www.instagram.com/p/C_WAGSmxs0K/?img_index=1)
- seanw444 2y ago
  Also, "invasive" has gained the connotation of "bad" for some reason, as though regions and their flora/fauna do not change and have not changed over time. Species invade. Such is the ecosystem.
  - cmrdporcupine 2y ago
    Definitely. Obviously the rate of change is crazy higher than anything pre-anthropocene but... but it's more broadly just part of biology. imho there's a kind of unfortunate essentialist philosophy which runs rampant among some "ecologists" and which has seeped into the public sphere... which believes that "nature" is a self-balancing system, and it is only our interference (as something "outside" nature) that breaks this. And this gets tied into the "natives" vs "invasives" dialog, as well. I think this is profoundly wrong. Nature is chaos. (Said in Werner Herzog voice, or something). Consider that the ice age only ended just over 10,000 years ago -- which is an extremely short time ago in geological and evolutionary terms -- and every forest, meadow or natural space you see in (temperate North America and Europe at least) is very new and was "invaded" after the glaciers melted and as the climate warmed. In some cases quite recently.
    - tway_GdBRwW 2y ago
      As you point out, the problem is that the rate of change is crazy higher than what almost all multi-celled life is used to. I'm on board with your view that we are a part of nature, not separate, but when I think of previous speed-ups in rate of change (i.e. sexual selection to allow more rapid gene reshuffling, or epigenetic modification which allows more flexibility from the same genes) these have been spread across multiple species. The acceleration we are currently seeing is basically due to the industrial revolution, which is due to people finding an net energy positive fuel source and leveraging this. Nature is a chaotic system, yes, but chaotic systems have balance and tend to have semi-regular orbits. By so drastically changing the rate of change past what any other living thing can match, we are on course to push the system into a new regime. Which is unlikely to be as pleasant as the one we currently enjoy.
      - cmrdporcupine 2y ago
        I mean, see my point above about rate of change following the end of the ice ages. The part of North America I'm in, it's actually really young in evolutionary terms. And was really in constant intense flux even prior to European settlement. And the locals here (Anishinaabe and Iriquois) also intervened heavily with fire and planting for thousands of years, too. More broadly we're committing ecocide in much more terrible ways. All that said, I tend to plant natives because they're usually (but not always) better adapted. Apples, I had to spray the crap out of and cut all of mine down. Pawpaws? Took care of themselves. Inter-specific "hybrid" grapes (with North American vitis ancestry) require almost no spraying, while v. vinifera is weak and requires constant intervention (I also do my own grape breeding). I had dwarf sour cherries bred in western Canada, and they can't handle the heat and humidity here. Native black cherry grows fantastic (I've thought about trying to breed with it). However here's the thing. Among native plant advocates there's this kind of schizo thing. On one hand we're supposed to plant natives because they're better adapted for our environment. On the other hand we're supposed to root out the invasives because they're out-competing the natives and pushing them out. Huh? Which is it? Adapted for this place, or too weak to thrive in this place? I'm not the first to point this out.
- Spivak 2y ago
  Yep, I have a huge native plant garden and some non-native basil I've let flower and the native garden might as well not exist to the bees. There's 10-15 bees on the basil from sunup to sundown.
  - cmrdporcupine 2y ago
    Aside: I planted a "columnar" basil this year I got from a local grower. Not sure of species, etc but small little leaves, seems way more drought and heat tolerant (I've completely neglected it) and one thing that's great about it is that it seems to just.. not... go to seed and flower. I always end up with too much basil and it goes bonkers all over the garden. Pine nuts and parmesan are way too expensive to make pesto at any quantity to keep up with the basil.
    - a012 2y ago
      Basil is kinda weed for me too, but they attract a lot of bees and others as well. One day I saw a dragonfly was casually chewing a bee head …
      - cmrdporcupine 2y ago
        Dragonflies have been completely off the charts at my farm this year! So amazing. I'm guessing it's because the mosquitoes were really bad. The swallows were also bonkers in August. I'd look out my office window here over the front of my property and it was a swarm of both, feeding frenzy for bugs (I assume mosquitoes)
    - hansvm 2y ago
      - You can make some tasty pesto-like dishes with other nuts. Walnut is nice with a little less cheese and more lemon. Pistachio is good too, and you can cut the parmesan with 50% extra-sharp white cheddar to reduce costs. None of those sorts of alternatives are the same, but they're good and can be used similarly. - Basil is just another mint and works well with similar pairings. A basil-watermelon salad, or basil-cucumber infused water are nice summery treats. - If you ever make cocktails for your friends, you can preserve an awful lot of basil in a homemade simple syrup. It pairs nicely with lemon, and an easy thing to get started with would be a lemon basil vodka martini. - Pizza dough is much easier and cheaper to make than people give it credit for (and it's better as it ferments longer, just throw it in the fridge when you're done, and it'll be ready for 3-10 days when you need it, cutting down the latency between starting cooking and finishing dinner). Garlic powder and fresh herbs take it up a notch. - You can cook up a ton of basil with some shallots, hot red peppers, and a few other things to make a thick, herby, sweet, spicy sauce to serve with rice (basil in this preparation will be whole leaves and is the star of the dish). And so on. I think you'd struggle to use more than 10-20 leaves per day in a family of 2-4, so preservation techniques (canned sauces, frozen cubes of basil, ...) might still be important, but there are tons of options.
- jonah 2y ago
  Many invasives are everywhere, indeed. But I don't think it's necessary to be fatalistic about it. My point, though, is that if you are actively planting things, you should use ones that are endemic to your area. And why not, you're tipping the scales ever so slightly towards the natives. We hike a lot, usually twice a weekend, and whenever we can, we pull an invasive tansy which is hepatoxic to deer and other native animals. Since we started this practice a couple years ago, there seems to be a noticeable reduction of tansy along our more frequented trails. Another non-native around here is a European beachgrass which early settlers planted to "stabilize" the sand dunes along beaches. It has done that for sure but has also taken over and become a monoculture and destroyed the dune dynamics and crowded out all the native plants. It's extremely hard to remove and require either a lot of hand digging or herbicide application. Over many years of work, the situation is improving though.
- tinyplanets 2y ago
  There is a large body of peer-reviewed research showing the enormous damage that invasives species to do ecosystems. Pollinators will use non-native species if they don't have anything else available, but pollinator diversity and abundance is always less than what you'd find in a native-dominated plant assemblage.
persnickety 2y ago
How do I even find this out? When I ask the search engine about native plants in the nearest metropoly, closest I get is someone selling seed packs, without any clear scientific basis for their being native.
- nullindividual 2y ago
  Your local university should have a horticulture department with a list. A nursery not attached to a grocery or hardware store will likely have a list as well. Usually they will label the origin of each plant.
  - drewcoo 2y ago
    In the US, the state school with the best engineering programs will also be the one with the agriculture focus. There are also plant/seed vendors who can tell you about what they sell that's native where you live. Like this (scroll down to see map!): https://www.everwilde.com/store/Nelumbo-lutea-WildFlower-Seed.html https://www.everwilde.com/store/Nelumbo-lutea-WildFlower-See...
- steve_adams_86 2y ago
  My city has a designated group of people focused on ecological restoration of all sorts of public spaces. They’re called the “Parks Service” which doesn’t fully entail their role, but they’re all very experienced and educated regarding local native ecology. I was surprised we have this, so you might as well. I only discovered it because I volunteer to help restore public spaces and had the good fortune of meeting the city’s team on one occasion. They’re awesome. I wish I’d known sooner. It’s an incredible resource to have.
- macintux 2y ago
  There's probably a local organization dedicated to native plants. In Indiana, for example: https://indiananativeplants.org https://indiananativeplants.org
- pvaldes 2y ago
  Is easier than ever to identify a plant with internet, but some time ago people bough handbooks that provided decades of joy and discoveries. Support the writers that provide a better experience showing you the whole picture instead a small piece without context.
doublerabbit 2y ago
I'm a committee to volunteer looking after a graveyard down the road from me. We've just gained permission from the city council that we can make adaptions to the landscape including planting floral life that encourage wildlife, Bird boxes and Bat Boxes are allowed too. Sort of excited as this ties in to my life dream of having an animal sanctuary.
anthomtb 2y ago
> PLEASE be sure to plant only species and varieties native to YOUR area. It's much more beneficial all around than random "wildflowers" I get the sentiment but the swarm of bees* on my Russian sage, some 9000km away from Moscow, makes one wonder about this advice. *all sorts, not only European honeybees
- danparsonson 2y ago
  The problem is that non-native species, planted with the best of intentions, can become invasive and choke out native populations. See for example the Buddleia, which in the UK was often lauded as 'the butterfly bush' and which is now a massive nuisance across the nations railways and wildlife reserves.
  - macintux 2y ago
    Similarly, birds love Asian honeysuckle in the U.S., but the fruit is basically sugar water and the plant aggressively crowds out most native plants.
    - foobarian 2y ago
      I love the scent of honeysuckle. It makes it hard to know that it's invasive because I'd love to have it around the house.
  - pfdietz 2y ago
    I have Buddleia in my garden (which otherwise has a native focus). It's not at all invasive where I am, in upstate NY, probably due to the cold winters. In a colder winter it dies back to the roots and may not survive at all. Now, purple loosestrife is still all over, despite the biocontrol. And don't get me started about Phragmites or Alliaria petiolata (garlic mustard).
- vharuck 2y ago
  I figure that native plants give an edge to native pollinators. The explosion of spotted lantern flies shows how non-native plants can make things worse. Also, I'm ignorant when it comes to ecology. So I won't pretend to know how many roles a native plant plays throughout its lifecycle, let alone which non-native plants can fit those roles while looking pretty.

nullindividual 2y ago

I did the same. Ripped up my grass lawn and replaced with lavender, clover, roses, etc. Not only does it look better, but it’s less maintenance. I had a variety of bees, butterflies, and Anna’s Hummingbirds visit this year. It was a treat to watch!

aredox 2y ago

Flowers are one thing, but what stops many species from coming back is the lack of free-flowing rivers and the mud they need to dig or build their nests.

cmrdporcupine 2y ago
Yeah that and piles of decaying brush / wood / sticks, etc. (E.g. carpenter bees).
- AlexandrB 2y ago
  We intentionally keep a bunch of decaying logs and sticks in our yard for this purpose. I also accidentally left out a 2x4s we pulled out of an old wall (thus full of nail holes). Almost every hole, big or small, now has some kind of cap from solitary bees laying their eggs in it.

throwanem 2y ago

> They may not be unknown to science You might be surprised. If it's something you want to pursue, or just for general interest, iNaturalist and its related Seek app are the best places I know to start - if it's common, they'll tell you what it is; if not, there's nowhere better in the world for an entomological layperson to reach those who might be able to say - or who might be very interested in the fact that they can't!

tzs 2y ago
I was astonished when I read "Life on a Little Known Planet: A Biologist's View of Insects and Their World" [1]. The author was an entomologist who was one of the world's foremost experts on parasitic wasps. He'd put out traps to catch flying insects at his home over the summer in, if I recall correctly, New England, and often find ones that he didn't recognize. He'd even find parasitic wasps he didn't recognize. Upon further checking he'd find that many of these were unknown to science. I'd always thought that if you wanted to find insects unknown to science you'd have to go to isolated areas that had not been well explored. There was a good illustration in the book of how little we know. There was some invasive insect that was causing a lot of damage to California orange crops [2]. The invasive insect was native to Florida. In Florida its population was kept under control by a species of parasitic wasps that laid their eggs in its larvae which became wasp food before they could mature and start attacking the orange crop. A lot of money was spent to import those wasps into California and release them. This kind of biological pest control is attractive because parasites are often very specific about what species they will use as a host, which was the case with these wasps, so this should be safe as far as species other than the invasive one are concerned. The parasites aren't going to switch to some native host. They were correct in that the parasites didn't go after anything else, so caused no harm. But they also didn't go after the invasive insect. They just didn't lay eggs and died off. Eventually someone figured out why it hadn't worked. It turned out that what we had thought was a species of invasive insect turned out to be two very closely related species, call them A and B. The parasitic wasp species that laid eggs in their larvae also turnout out to be two species. One of the wasp species laid eggs in A larvae, and only A larvae, and the in B larvae, and only B larvae. All the invaders in California were from A, and all the wasps they trapped in Florida and sent to California were from the species that lays eggs in B. [1] https://www.amazon.com/Life-Little-Known-Planet-Biologists/dp/1558212493 https://www.amazon.com/Life-Little-Known-Planet-Biologists/d... [2] I read the book a long time ago. I may be misremembering the specific crop, and the specific types of insects involved.