Wild About Utah

September 1, 2011May 6, 2016

The Mud-Daubing Wasp

Female Sceliphron caementarium completing nest cell, Click to view a larger image, Courtesy and Copyright 2011 Jim Cane — Female *Sceliphron caementarium*
completing nest cell
Courtesy and
Copyright © 2011 Jim Cane

Pupa of
*Sceliphron caementarium*
Courtesy and
Copyright © 2011 Jim Cane

Pupa of Sceliphron caementarium. Click to view a larger image, Courtesy and Copyright 2011 Jim Cane — Female *Sceliphron caementarium*
completing nest cell
Courtesy and
Copyright © 2011 Jim Cane

Pupa of
*Sceliphron caementarium*
Courtesy and
Copyright © 2011 Jim Cane

The recession has slowed housing starts, but builders of clay dwellings remain busy. Millions of clay homes are built this and every summer in Utah. These dwellings can disintegrate in a summer cloudburst, so you’ll find them beneath overhangs like rock cliffs, or under bridges and the eaves of your house.

These free-standing mud homes are built by a few dozen species of solitary bees and wasps. Among them is the mud dauber, Sceliphron caementarium, a big leggy wasp found throughout Utah. The female wasp constructs hollow clay units one at a time, each the dimensions of a pitted date. The mother mud dauber gathers the wet clay in pellets. At the nest site, she draws the pellet into a ribbon of clay which becomes the next arch of the tubular nest. While working the clay, she audibly buzzes her flight muscles. This vibration visibly liquefies the clay for a few seconds. This strengthens its bond, much as workers in concrete do using large vibrating probes.

The mother wasp then collects spiders, often plucking them straight from their webs after a pitched battle. She permanently paralyzes each spider using her venomous sting. The venom is not lethal. Rather, it is paralytic, keeping the spider alive and fresh but helplessly immobile, a gruesome spider buffet for her grub-like larva to eat. Each hollow nest is packed with a half dozen spiders, one of which receives her egg. In a few weeks time, the growing wasp larva finishes eating its buffet and pupates, becoming dormant for the winter.

Nest building and provisioning by these wasps is a complex result of heritable instincts tailored to local circumstances by learning. It is also a rare trait among insects, most of whom simply lay their eggs and leave. Through observation and manipulative experiments, students of animal behavior have investigated mud-building wasps for well over a century. If you have mud daubers around your home, grab a cool drink, pull up a chair, and enjoy watching their home-making labors.

This is Linda Kervin for Bridgerland Audubon Society.

Credits:

Images: Courtesy & Copyright Jim Cane, Bridgerland Audubon Society
Text: Jim Cane, Bridgerland Audubon Society

Additional Reading:

“The Wasps”, Evans, Howard E. and Eberhard, Mary Jane West, 1970. Ann Arbor, University of Michigan Press. 265 p. illus. https://www.amazon.com/Wasps-Howard-Evans/dp/0715360604

“Bees, wasps, and ants : the indispensable role of Hymenoptera in gardens”, Grissell, Eric. 2010, 335 p. https://www.amazon.com/Bees-Wasps-Ants-Indispensable-Hymenoptera/dp/0881929883

August 28, 2011March 1, 2018

Great Basin Bristlecone Pines Utah’s Mountain Sentinels

Click to view larger image of Bristlecone Pine, Photo Courtesy and Copyright Mark Larese-Casanova, Photographer — Bristlecone Pine
Photo Courtesy & Copyright
Mark Larese-Casanova, Photographer

Bristlecone Pine Grain
Compared to a Dime
Photo Courtesy & Copyright
Mark Larese-Casanova, Photographer

Click to view larger image of Bristlecone Pine grain and a dime, Photo Courtesy and Copyright Mark Larese-Casanova, Photographer — Bristlecone Pine
Photo Courtesy & Copyright
Mark Larese-Casanova, Photographer

Bristlecone Pine Grain
Compared to a Dime
Photo Courtesy & Copyright
Mark Larese-Casanova, Photographer

Hi, this is Mark Larese-Casanova from the Utah Master Naturalist Program at Utah State University Extension.

Utah’s cold mountaintops, like its hottest deserts, are rather inhospitable to most plants. Although more precipitation falls at higher elevations, colder temperatures prevent much of the water from being used by plants, since most of it falls as snow in winter. High winds also inhibit growth and can contribute to frost or wind damage to plants. Any plants that grow here must be especially hardy.

The Great Basin bristlecone pine is a grand sentinel of our rocky, high mountain ridges. Its shorter needles are grouped in bundles of five, and grow densely at the end of the branches, creating a ‘bottlebrush’ or ‘foxtail’. However, the growth of the wood is the most interesting aspect of the Great Basin bristlecone pine. For a tree, each ring represents one year of growth. Because of the colder temperatures and shorter growing season, each growth ring of a bristlecone pine is particularly small, usually around 1/32th of an inch. The tight growth rings result in especially dense, resinous wood that is resistant to decay and insects.

At higher elevations, a bristlecone pine’s growth form becomes more twisted and contorted by the wind. Over time, much of the tree may die, and the living portion may simply be a strip of bark up the trunk and just a few branches.

These adaptations allow the Great Basin bristlecone pine to live an exceptionally long life despite such harsh conditions. It is common for a bristlecone pine to live for thousands of years, and the oldest recorded specimen was aged at approximately 5,000 years old. That means it germinated from seed a few hundred years before the first Egyptian pyramid was even built! Bristlecone pines can even remain standing for thousands of years after they die. Growth ring patterns can be compared between living and dead bristlecone pines to reveal a chronology of our climate for the past seven, eight, maybe ten thousand years!

To see bristlecone pines in Utah, hike the Bristlecone Pine Trail in Bryce Canyon National Park or the Ramparts Trail at Cedar Breaks National Monument. Be sure to take only photos, and not wood or cones. Bristlecone pines will be around a lot longer than we will, and they could use all the help they can get.

For Wild About Utah, I’m Mark Larese-Casanova.

Credits:
Images: Courtesy & Copyright Mark Larese-Casanova
Text: Mark Larese-Casanova, Utah Master Naturalist Program at Utah State University Extension.

Additional Reading:

Lanner, R.M. 2007. The Bristlecone Book: A Natural History of the World’s Oldest Trees. Mountain Press Publishing Company.

Cohen, M. P. 1998. A Garden Of Bristlecones: Tales Of Change In The Great Basin. University of Nevada Press.

August 18, 2011February 22, 2018

Stromatolites

Hi I’m Holly Strand.

Shark Bay in Northwest Australia is on my “places to see before I die” list. In a section of the bay called Hamelin Pond, colonies of microbes form hard, dome-shaped, deposits. Called stromatolites, these structures embody one of the oldest forms of life on earth. The fossil record of microbes in older stromatolites date back 3.5 billion years. Their antiquity, abundance, and persistence to modern times make stromatolites a fascinating subject for scientific inquiry.

Basically, stromatolites are layered structures formed primarily by cyanobacteria. This photosynthesizing bacteria changes the pH of the water causing calcium carbonate to precipitate over a mat of bacterial filaments. The minerals, along with grains of sediment in the water, are trapped in a layer of goo that surrounds the bacterial colonies. Then the lower layer bacteria grows upward and penetrates the most recent mineral and sediment layer. When this process is repeated over and over, a stromatolite is formed.

For over 2 billion years stromatolites dominated the shallow seas and formed extensive reef tracts rivaling those of modern coral reefs. However, today, stromatolites are relatively rare. You will usually find them growing in extreme environments, such as hypersaline water or thermal springs.

While Shark Bay boasts a stunning example of a modern stromatolite colony, you don’t have to go all the way to Australia. When lake levels are low, you can easily see them in the Great Salt Lake. They span hundreds of square kilometers in shallow shoreline waters. Some say that the Great Salt Lake contains some of the most extensive areal coverage of living stromatolites in the world.

One of the best places to view them is from the shore near Buffalo Point on Antelope Island. When conditions are clear, you can see them underwater at the mouth of the Great Salt Lake Marina.

More than just memorials to ancient life, the stromatolites also play a vital role in Great Salt Lake ecology. They are the principal habitat for the brine fly larvae and pupae. In turn, brine flies are a critical diet for goldeneye ducks, American avocets and many other water birds.

Thanks to Wayne Wurtsbaugh, from Utah State University’s College of Natural Resources for his support in developing this Wild About Utah episode.

For Wild About Utah, I’m Holly Strand.

Credits:

Photos: Courtesy Utah Division of Wildlife Resources, Wayne A. Wurtsbaugh and Linda L’Ai
Text: Holly Strand

Sources & Additional Reading:

National Park Service. Stomatolite Fossils. https://www.nps.gov/care/naturescience/stromatolite.htm [Accessed August 16, 2011]

Schopf, J.William. Anatoliy B Kudryavtsev; Andrew D Czaja; Abhishek B Tripathi. 2007. Evidence of Archean life: Stromatolites and microfossils. Precambian Research, 158. No. 3-4 pp. 141-155.

UNESCO Shark Bay Western Australia https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/578 [Accessed August 16, 2011]

University of California Museum of Paleontology. Cyanobacteria: Fossil Record https://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/bacteria/cyanofr.html [Accessed August 16, 2011]

Walter, M R. 1983. Archean stromatolites – Evidence of the earth’s earliest benthos
Earth’s earliest biosphere: Its origin and evolution. Princeton, NJ, Princeton University Press.

Wurtsbaugh, W.A. 2009. Biostromes, brine flies, birds and the bioaccumulation of selenium in Great Salt Lake, Utah. Pp. 1-15 In: A. Oren, D. Naftz, P. Palacios & W.A. Wurtsbaugh (eds). Saline Lakes Around the World:Unique Systems with Unique Values. Natural Resources and Environmental Issues, volume XV. S.J. and Jessie Quinney Natural Resources Research Library, Logan , Utah. URL: https://www.cnr.usu.edu/quinney/files/uploads/NREI2009online.pdf

August 11, 2011January 24, 2021

Fitting the bill

Few among us would choose to eat a steak with a spoon or soup with a fork. And in the world of birds, it’s the same story – you need the right tool for the right job – and you can tell a lot about a bird by paying attention to its beak.Fitting the bill

Physiologically, beaks are a specialized extension of the skull and are coated in keratin – the same material that makes up our fingernails. And like our fingernails, the cutting edges of the beak can be re-grown as they are worn down by use.

Birds use beaks for a multitude of tasks including preening, weaving nests, and defending territories. However it is the task of eating that seems to dictate beak shape and size. Envision the hummingbird, for instance. Its long, thin beak – and corresponding tongue – is designed to reach deep into flowers to collect the nectar within. A hummingbird beak would not work for a woodpecker or a great horned owl. Likewise an eagle’s beak needs to be sharp and strong for tearing flesh, and wouldn’t suit the lifestyle of an ibis or a sparrow.

One Utah native, the aptly-named red crossbill, has one of the most unique beaks around. When closed, its curved top and bottom bills overlap crossways in what looks like an awkward and uncomfortable pose.

French naturalist Count Buffon, first laid eyes on a crossbill in the mid-1700’s. The bird was collected in the Americas, then shipped abroad for examination. Without observing the crossbill in its natural habitat, Buffon labeled its beak “an error and defect of nature, and a useless deformity.” More than 50 years later, Scottish-American naturalist Alexander Wilson observed a crossbill in the wild and determined that its beak ‘deformity’ was in reality a magnificently adapted tool. The crossbill’s diet consists mainly of the seeds of conifer trees, and it turns out that the bird’s curiously crossed beak is perfectly adapted to prying apart the scales of pinecones to get at the seeds within.

Members of the finch family, these birds are often seen in flocks and occasionally visit backyard feeders. They are easily identified by their unique beaks, which serve as a reminder that the right tool for the right job can sometimes seem a bit unconventional.

For more information and photographs of crossbills, visit our website at www.wildaboututah.org. Thank you to Rocky Mountain Power Foundation for supporting the research and development of this Wild About Utah topic.

For the Stokes Nature Center and Wild About Utah, this is Andrea Liberatore.
Fitting the Bill-Credits:
Fitting the Bill
Photos: Courtesy & Copyright Paul Higgins(phiggins)www.pbase.com/phiggins
Text: Andrea Liberatore, Stokes Nature Center, logannature.org

Fitting the Bill-Additional Reading:

Benkman, Craig W. 1987. Crossbill Foraging Behavior, Bill Structure, and Patterns of Food Profitability. The Wilson Bulletin 99(3) p. 351-368 https://www.uwyo.edu/benkman/pdfs%20of%20papers/benkman_1987_wilsonbull.pdf

Conniff, Richard. 2011. The Species Seekers: Heroes, Fools and the Mad Pursuit of Life on Earth. W.W. Norton & Company: NY https://www.amazon.com/Species-Seekers-Heroes-Fools-Pursuit/dp/0393341321

Pearson, T. Gilbert (ed.). 1936. Birds of America. Garden City Publishing Company, Inc. Garden City, NY https://www.amazon.com/T-Gilbert-Pearson/dp/1331531268/ref=pd_lpo_14_t_0/144-1525643-4789824

Fitting the bill
Fitting the bill
Fitting the bill