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Field and Swamp: Animals and Their Habitats

Bird pages: Land Birds Shore Birds Bird Blog February 2007 Bird Blog Duke Gardens exotic ducks Audubon Swamp Garden Zoo Birds    Insect (by taxonomic order) pages: Coleoptera (Beetles) Dictyoptera (Mantids & Cockroaches) Diptera (True Flies) Hemiptera: Auchenorrhyncha (Cicadas and Hoppers) Hemiptera: Heteroptera (True Bugs) Hemiptera: Aphididae (Aphids) Hymenoptera (Bees, Wasps, Sawflies & Ants) Lepidoptera: Hesperioidea (Skippers) Lepidoptera: Papilionoidea (True Butterflies) Lepidoptera: Butterfly & Skipper Index Lepidoptera: Moths Megaloptera (Fishflies), Mecoptera (Scorpionflies) Neuroptera (Lacewings) Orthoptera (Grasshoppers, Katydids & Crickets) Odonata: Anisoptera (Dragonflies) Odonata: Zygoptera (Damselflies)    Reptile/Amphibian/Alligator pages: Snakes Lizards Alligators Audubon Swamp Garden (Alligators, turtles) Turtles Frogs and Toads Salamanders Zoo Reptiles    Spiders, other animal pages: Spiders Ticks and Mites Mammals Zoo Mammals Fish Crustaceans Other Arthropods Annelids (segmented worms) Mollusks

Fooling Predators or Prey

Just for openers: pairs of mimicked and mimicker

Stinging Potter Wasp (Eumenes fraternus), Durham, 9/28/09.	Harmless Syrphid Fly (Sphiximorpha, subfamily Eristalinae), Durham, 10/24/05.  The big eyes and short antennae give it away.

Male Yellow Jacket (Vespula vulgaris?), Durham, NC, 11/20/08.  Note the long, black antennae.	Virginia Flower Fly (Milesia virginiensis, subfamily Eristalinae),  Johnston Mill, Orange County, NC, 7/1/06.   Note the flattened abdomen, a characteristic apparently peculiar to syrphid flies.

Paper wasp (Polistes genus) on Pinkweed.  Durham, NC, 9/5/09	Grape Root Borer Moth (Vitacea polistiformis), Mason Farm Biological Reserve, Orange County, NC, 5/1/09.  Its species name acknowledges this resemblance.

Stinging Cowkiller (Dasymutilla occidentalis), scurrying madly along at the ground at Mason Farm Biological Reserve, Orange County, NC, 9/1/07.   It is a type of wasp that is part of the velvet ant family.	Harmless checkered beetle (Enoclerus ichneumoneus), Penny's Bend Nature Preserve, Durham County, NC, 4/4/09.   Granted, this insect is never found in  the same environments as the Cowkiller and hardly moves.  It may be a coincidence that they look so similar, but as we'll see later, red and black are a winning combination.

Bitter-tasting Male Monarch, Penny's Bend Nature Preserve, Durham County, NC, 8/2405.  This butterfly gets its taste from milkweed family alkaloids it consumes.	Harmless Viceroy (Limenitis archippus), Durham, NC, 9/14/05.  The hind wing bands give it away.

Copyright © 2010  Dorothy E. Pugh.  All rights reserved.