Garden Spider

when i was a kid, we had this variety of bleeding heart plant growing in our yard:

i thought they looked like translucent fairies wearing poofy pants. i was recently reminded of this & wanted to make a translucent fairy in poofy pants.

i love how the transparent parts turned out and absolutely want to experiment more with this technique. i printed the inner skeletal parts as normal, and then printed a one-walled shell with no infill out of transparent filament. i cut the shell open in the back and slid the skeleton inside. the outer layer of the head doesn't have eyes sockets, which makes the eyes hazy.

I want to know which native plants have specialist bee species that depend on them. I have wanted to know this for a while. A year ago, I found this massive list of all the pollen specialist bees of the western US:

I am going through this list, first identifying which ones actually have record in Washington (and removing the rest), then which have a record in western Washington, or at least west of the Cascades but in B.C. or Oregon, and then copying the list from their specific page about the plants that they use.

I kinda have a suspicion that this has already been done somewhere by someone, but I wasn't able to find it.

The step after determining which species are native to west of the Cascades and which species they use is then to make a sheet, organized by plant, of which bee species use what plants.

Then, I'm gonna take that list to my bosses and be like, yo, we should plant all of these and make little educational signs about native plants and native bees and native peoples and how they were traditionally cared for pre-colonization and how settlers came in and took over and changed how the land was treated and how we can help the plants, bees, and peoples survive and thrive going into the future.

Though this species list also brings up a concern of mine. It lists Helianthus gracilentus put into the cashew family, while properly listing the other Helianthus species in the Asteraceae family. I also saw a bee named after Berberis, aka the genus Oregon grape was moved into, but the host genus was listed as Vitis, aka, actual grapes. Which I'm pretty sure don't grow anywhere throughout that bee's range. I'm not actually stopping and reading all the plant species at this point, but still, definitely some errors in this data set.

The list of sources is long:

Records of native pollen specialist bees captured or observed foraging flowers of host plants were compiled from Discover Life (Ascher & Pickering 2020), peer reviewed articles (Bouseman & LaBerge 1978; Brooks & Griswold 1988; Cane 2018; Cockerell 1916, 1919; Cresson 1878; Daly 1973; Danforth 1994; Donovan 1977; Griswold 1993; Griswold & Miller 2010; Hurd et al. 1980; LaBerge 1963, 1967, 1969, 1971a, 1971b, 1973, 1977, 1980, 1985, 1986, 1989; LaBerge & Bouseman 1970; LaBerge & Ribble 1972, 1975; Lanham, 1981; Linsley & MacSwain 1958; McGinley 2003; Michener 1939; Michez & Eardley 2007; Minckley et al. 1994, 2000; Moldenke 1976, 1979; Parys et al. 2018; Portman, Neff, & Griswold 2016; Pow 2019; Provancher, 1895; Ribble 1974; Robertson 1926, 1928, 1929; Rozen 1958, 1992; Snelling 1983; Thorp 1969; Timberlake 1951, 1954, 1956, 1958, 1960, 1962, 1964, 1968, 1975, 1980; Wright 2018), technical bulletins (Danforth 1996; Grigarick & Stange 1968; Hurd & Michener 1955; Krombein et al. 1979; LaBerge 1967; Mitchell 1960, 1962; Ribble 1968; Stephen 1954; Thorp & LaBerge 2005; Timberlake 1953), and personal communications.

Because I think my goal with this is to identify the bees that are the most specialist, that have the narrowest range of host plants and thus, to my mind, are at greatest risk of decline/extinction.

One the other hand, just because a bee uses white clover, doesn't mean that that is a great choice nutritionally speaking, for that bee. It may be something it's been forced to do because other plants have become unavailable.

I have decided though, that if the plant doesn't occur west of the Cascades, I will not include it. I'm gonna use iNaturalist to determine that (I mean, if it's one I don't recognize), and double check with the Washington Wildflower Search map.

List of hosts: Nope, not even one.

Me: Ah. Well at least you're cute

It is, however, the first to list Madia elegans so I'm a bit torn. But realistically, if you're planting for the less generalist of the specialist bees, this one's foraging needs will almost certainly also be met. It is a leaf cutter bee, which is cool, but there are 5 different species of leaf cutter bee on this list, and all but one of them have pretty long lists for a specialist bee. And none of them are in the 'rare' category.

So. many of these to not fit that description. Oligolecty is apparently the fancy one-word term for a specialist bee, and wikipedia says that applies to bees that collect from only a single family or genus.

Interestingly, many (most) of the bees on this list I've been working from use multiple families. Though I suppose that does give a fuller picture of bee species that are somewhat picky, compared to say, bumblebees which love everything.

That's the individual species, and then this is for when a genus was listed:

I'm probably going to come back and narrow it down to bees that in my area that use five families or fewer plant families as hosts. For now, here are the plants that showed up the most:

Top 9 Genera, with number of bee species in parenthesis:

Salix (21)

Lomatium (10)

Solidago (8)

Grindelia (7)

Ribes (7)

Malus (6)

Cirsium (5)

Fragaria (5)

Phacelia (5)

Top 6 Species, with number of bee species in parenthesis:

Lomatium dissectum (9)

Taraxacum officinale (9)

Potentilla gracilis (6)

Salix exigua (6)

Achillea millefolium (5)

Drymocallis glandulosa (5)

Salix, which are your willows, was definitely one of the most abundantly used genera, followed by Lomatium (aka Biscuitroots), Solidago (aka Goldenrods), and Grindelia (Gumweeds). Dandelions (Taraxacum officinale) which are non-native, tied with Lomatium dissectum (Fernleaf biscuitroot) which is native and thrives in tough conditions as long as it gets full sun.

One thing to note about dandelions is that apparently their pollen is less nutritionally dense than many other plant pollens. So it's likely that bees that are using them are doing so because there aren't enough of their preferred species. It's better than starving for sure, but it's likely that long term reliance on dandelions rather than the native species they co-evolved with will lead to problems.

What I would encourage people to do is find out what species of bees in your area use dandelions (if dandelions are not native to your area), and then find out what native plants those native bees have been seen using. Or, start noticing when dandelions are blooming in your area, and figure out what native plants are blooming at the same time (this would be much easier). Plant those native plants, and don't worry about the dandelions. Just focus on providing the care and conditions the native plants need to thrive, and help them rebuild their populations.

Cephenemyia ulrichii (the moose throat botfly) is the funniest insect alive to me and there is no competition because

This species will have the most innocent adorable kissable marketable appearance of any fly evolved, but then you look them up and they have blood curdling lore able to turn your stomach in a sense rivaling Nick Cutter’s novels. I couldn’t even keep it together trying to read up on their life cycle for the first time because of

1. How convolutely messed up of a parasitism method they chose to thrive by

2. The extremely stupid reason behind why they accidentally end up in humans and the horrific location where

3. The images-information whiplash happening in my head that I hope this editing gets across.

My bosses: Sure 🤷‍♂️🤷‍♂️🤷‍♂️

Me a few months ago: Cool, I'm gonna go do that.

Me today, seeing that they're rooted, growing new leaves, and that there's very few weeds: Grow my babies, grow!🥳🥳🥳 In the future I'll be able to coppice you for more live stakes! (And someone who definitely is not me will be able to harvest basketry materials)(like I'll probably take some, but now there's a reliable, sustainable, accessible source of basketry willow. In a city park!) And spread the joy to other moist areas that are hard to mow!🥳🥳🥳