- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
Do good things come in twos?
Well, yes. Today, 2-22-22, is a palindrome day. The numbers read the same way backward as they do forward.
And it happens to be a Twos-Day. It takes two.
What is a two? Two is a pair. Two is a couple. Two is a duet. Especially on a Twos-Day.
Can you imagine all the couples--twosomes--getting married today in Las Vegas?
Speaking of twosomes--we were, weren't we?--it's time to treasure insect wedding photography.
Love bugs all.
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
One point about insect wedding photography is that you don't need an invitation to attend. You just have to keep your distance and not disturb the bridal couple. No sudden movements. No stressful impatience. And no camera flash, please.
It helps, though, if you grow the host plant so a bride and a groom will show up. In this case, we grew passionflower vine (Passiflora), the host plant of the Gulf Fritillaries (Agraulis vanillae).
One morning we saw a butterfly eclose from her chrysalis. Wedding Day! Within minutes, a male suitor arrived.
They became a couple.
Then unexpected guests arrived...a hungry caterpillar munching on the leaves and a second prospective suitor (PS) (rejected) and a third PS (rejected) and a fourth PS (rejected).
PS, leave them alone!
When the "ceremony" ended, the couple simply left. One sipped nectar from the nearby Mexican sunflower, Tithonia rotundifola. The other flew over the fence.
Soon we'll have more eggs, more caterpillars, more chrysalids, and more adults.
Life is like that when you're growing Passiflora and hoping for a Wedding Day.
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
Fifty shades of orange—with a touch of silver.
The bridal couple on the pomegranate tree wore orange and silver to celebrate their honeymoon.
The bride may have blushed. I don't know. Did she? Don't all brides blush?
The groom, in true form, looked quite dapper and dashing.
So there they were. The two of them. The blushing bride and the quite dapper-and-dashing groom.
They didn't invite me to their wedding. I was an uninvited guest, the only guest. So I felt obliged to crash their wedding and capture some images.
Just happened to have a camera with a zoom macro lens slung on my shoulder.
Who can resist insect wedding photography? That's about the only wedding photography happening during the COVID-19 pandemic.
This couple? Gulf Fritillaries: Agraulis vanillae. (See UC Davis distinguished professor Art Shapiro's website to learn more about them).
We usually see Gulf Frits on their host plant, the passionflower vine (Passiflora), where the females lay their eggs. and the cycle of eggs-to-caterpillars-to-chrysalids-to-adults continues.
But something startled this pair and off they fluttered from the passionflower vine to the nearby pomegranate tree.
Evolutionary success!
Ever seen the amazing macro photography of Alex Wild, curator of entomology at the University of Texas, Austin? He holds a doctorate in entomology from UC Davis, where he studied ant taxonomy and evolution with major professor Phil Ward. Wild also writes the incredible blog, Myrmecos: Little Things Matter, and teaches photography with colleagues at BugShot courses. He shoots Canon with an MPE-65mm lens.
On July 5, Alex Wild pinned this tweet:
"I'm pretty sure you didn't ask for this, but here's a gallery of insects having sex."
I'm pretty sure Alex Wild does not mince words.
Meanwhile, check out his "insect wedding photography" images!
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
You're heard these idioms:
- The early bird gets the worm
- First come, first served.
- Johnny-on-the-spot.
- The second mouse gets the cheese.
But have you ever seen a Gulf Fritillary (Agraulis vanillae) eclose and then see her...well...engaged?
Such was the case on Labor Day, Sept. 3 in our little pollinator garden in Vacaville, Calif.
The female (we'll call her "Bride-to-Be") finishes eclosing and is hanging from her empty chrysalis, just drying her wings on the passionflower vine (aptly named) and getting acquainted with her new life stage and leafy surroundings.
Then, whoosh. A suitor (we'll call him "Groom-to-Be") appears out of nowhere. Well, from somewhere, but somewhere quite threatening. He looks tired and worn out, too fragile to fly. (As a colleague said: "He's accumulated a lot of frequent flier miles.") His ragged wings indicate a recent encounter with one or more predators, maybe a bird or a praying mantis. But he lucked out in the Predator-Prey tally: the final score, Butterfly, 1: Predator 0.
He lucks out again. He's the first to arrive at the altar. Our camera catches the action.
"In some Heliconius, the males locate female pupae and may even copulate with the female before she ecloses!" commented butterfly guru Art Shapiro, UC Davis distinguished professor of evolution and ecology. "They are related."
Labor Day, 2018.
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
So there they were, the bride and groom, culminating their vows.
We spotted them in Vacaville, Calif., clinging to a passion flower vine (Passiflora), their host plant--just the two of them, the female Gulf Fritillary (Agraulis vanillae) and the male.
Two's company? Not for long.
Soon other Gulf Frits descended on them.
Two's company, three's a crowd. Where did all those uninvited guests come from? They're everywhere!
All went well, though. The guests fluttered off, leaving the couple alone and allowing the photographer to engage in insect wedding photography.
Gulf Frits are incredibly beautiful, what with their bright orange wings with black markings, and underside, their elongated silver iridescence spots. A touch of the tropics!
Gulf Frits have been around a long time in the Bay Area--more than a century, according to Art Shapiro, distinguished professor of evolution and ecology at UC Davis. "This dazzling bit of the New World Tropics was introduced into southern California in the 19th century--we don't know how--and was first recorded in the Bay Area before 1908, though it seems to have become established there only in the 1950s," Shapiro writes on his website. "It can be quite common in the East and South Bay--particularly in Berkeley--and has been found breeding spontaneously as far inland as Fairfield, where, however, it is not established."
"There are scattered records in the Central Valley and even up to Folsom, perhaps resulting from people breeding the species for amusement or to release at social occasions. According to Hal Michael, who grew up in South Sacramento, this species bred there in abundance on garden Passiflora in the early 1960s. It seems to have died out by the early 1970s, however. Intolerant of hard freezes, it still managed to survive the record cold snap of 1990 that largely exterminated the Buckeye regionally!"
Shapiro says that in the Bay Area "this species can be seen flying any day of the year, if it is warm and sunny enough."
Thankfully, that's not all they do.
Coming soon to a passion flower vine near you--eggs, caterpillars, chrysalids, and then those gorgeous butterflies!