Familiar faces - August 20

Tis’ the time of the year when adult Seaside Lady Beetles (Naemia seriata) make their appearance on the marsh. 

Seaside lady beetle munching on pollen

These cheerfully colored ladybugs are running up and down the salt marsh grasses. Unlike other ladybugs, Naemia seriata adults eat Spartina pollen not aphids. This year salt marsh hay (Spartina patens) flowered weakly, and the ladybugs were mostly confined to saltmeadow cordgrass (Spartina alterniflora).

 Bluets are beautiful damselflies that tend to visit the salt marsh in our area. Their brilliant azure color peeks out among the drab vegetation like a glimpse of a blue sky on a cloudy day. Like other Odonata – dragonflies and damselflies, these delicate insects are predators feeding on small insects and spiders.

While dragonflies habits are commendable, there are other bugs on the marsh that do not behave in such a proper way. Deer and horse flies (family Tabanidae) are a constant nuisance during the summer months. These handsomely marked robust flies have rasping mouthparts that cut the skin of their victim like a miniature saw, and it hurts! Like mosquitoes, only female tabanids bite; male lack the saw-like mouthparts and feed on pollen.

The eggs are deposited on the vegetation in masses containing up to several hundred of individual eggs. 

The larvae slither their way through the muck, mud, and potholes of the salt marsh. They are predacious and will eat whatever they can catch – insects, snails, worms, and other little creatures.