Dudu Diaries

Dear All

I have been very lucky to spend the xmas holidays in the Kakamega Forest in Western Kenya. After a busy year of looking at bugs, studying bees, writing and research in many remote places, what better way to spend the holidays than sitting quietly by a stream deep in the heart of the forest…

As I waited by the stream, watching the coming and going of countless marvelous insects, two exceptionally beautiful damselflies made a special appearance. The first was a Red Jewel. This rare creature is found along forested streams in Western Kenya and Uganda. It lays its eggs in the clear, flowing waters where oxygen levels are high and the water pure and sweet. It is, in my opinion, one of the most beautiful of Africa’s insects.

The gorgeous Red Jewel deep in the heart of Kakamega Forest, Western Kenya.

The Red Jewel spent most of its time chasing off other damselflies and even the much larger dragonflies from its special vantage point in the sun along the stream. Occasionally it swept out and grabbed a snack in form of a passing mosquito or hapless flies that became trapped on the waters’ surface.

I watched the Red Jewel flashing about and perched, carefully recording when it captured prey. As I followed its behaviour keenly, a leaf rustled beside me and I looked up to find myself eye-to-eye with another beauty. This one was watching as much as I was watching it. It was draped in the dappled light gazing out at the world, its tongue flicking in and out.

Yes, I flinched when I first spotted it, and it responded with the same and a warning hiss. Then, as I realised that it was not the least bit interested in my, but merely enjoying the warm, liquid golden sunshine that flowed down through the canopy far overhead, we both relaxed and shared the view of the stream and its myriad inhabitants. (Yes, you might have guessed already that this creature was a snake – a lovely little Green Bush Viper)…

The elegant Green Bush Viper

As the Green Bush Viper and I both relaxed again, my attention wandered back to the flashes of colour moving around the stream. And then on a leaf right in front of me appeared another of the forests’ jewels – The incredible Sapphire, another of East Africa’s loveliest damselflies…

The elegant, exquisite Sapphire Damselfly, Kakamega Forest

When one is honored, inspired and awed by beauty such as this – I can’t help but think of how special and precious all our forests and all our biodiversity is on this planet. I feel that in witnessing and exploring the wonders of nature, I also have to point out that we need to conserve it for its beauty and interest as much as its utility and practical contributions to our daily lives. What a joy to be able to find spaces wherever they may be, that are filled with species who have come about through millions of years of evolution and share with us their home and our home on this lonely little planet.

Stream in rainforest, Kakamega Forest, Western Kenya

Please keep the ‘little creatures that run the world’ in your thoughts during the holidays…

More from the world of bugs soon!

Dino

Dear All

I recently participated in an expedition through parts of northwestern Kenya to look at different kinds of bees.

The first thing that surprises many people about bees is that there are lots of different kinds of bees – in fact close to 20,000 species have been described! The honeybee, which is familiar to almost everyone, is just one kind of bee (a single species called Apis mellifera).

One of my favourite bees in East Africa are the Amegilla bees. They are beautiful, fast-flying, hard-working creatures that zip about and fly with a characteristic high-pitched buzz that is most evident when the approach flowers. Amegilla are solitary bees. This is another surprising fact about bees: most species are solitary, with females building and caring for a nest on their own. Honeybees are social and live in colonies, as do a few other bees, but for the most part, the bees are loners.

Female solitary bees have their nests to go to at night or when they are not out feeding from flowers. However, males don’t have anywhere to go. They end up having to sleep on stems of plants, grasses being a favorite perch… In some species, such as Amegilla, the males will often gather at particular sleeping areas in the evening. These are often near a stream or edge of a wetland in a sheltered spot – sort of like a male bees’ version of the pub I guess…

We found this aggregation of Amegilla males sleeping at the edge of a swamp near Bogoria recently… They are really charming creatures…

Male Amegilla bees lined up in their ‘dormitory’ for the night…

More from the world of bugs soon!

Dear All

Here is an incredible and rather gruesome example of camouflage that I recently came across. This was on the shore of Lake Victoria, among the buttress roots of a fig tree…

What are these mysterious creatures?

As you can see – there was a small group of strange beings shuffling along on the bark of the tree. A closer look revealed that these insects were dressed up in one of the most bizarre costumes! They were wearing a suit of DEAD ANTS!! Yes, the ‘cloak’ covering the insects’ body is made up of dead ants. These are ants that this Assassin Bug nymph has captured and then glued to its back after killing them and sucking out their body fluids.

Living among the young Assassin Bug nymphs was a single adult, who is likely the mother of some of these young killers. She was brightly coloured, but did not wear a coat of ants.

More from the wonderful (and bizarre) world of insects soon…

Dear All

I recently participated in National Moth Week, which is a fantastic initiative to get people more interested in insects and the world around them.

To learn more about National Moth Week and see fabulous pictures of moths from around the world, please visit this site:

http://nationalmothweek.org

To look at moths in Turkana this involved looking at moths (and many events were held around the world). I was in northern Kenya at the Turkana Basin Institute at the time, and it had been fairly dry in the desert so there weren’t as many moths around. Here are a few photos of what we found:

The first step was setting up the light and sheet to attract the moths…

Within a minute, the first moth had arrived (I think that it is a member of the Tortricidae Family):

First moth that arrived at the light

A few minutes later and there were a lot more insects gathering at the light:

How many insects can you see? (Too many to count!)

Several different moths came by for the few hours that we were able to run the light, here are just a few of them:

More from the world of bugs, soon, including some amazing moths from Western Uganda!

Dear All

Greetings – have been travelling with limited email access (and time!). A few weeks ago I was in northern Kenya at the Turkana Basin Institute looking at bees.

A yellow-flowered legume, Crotolaria, was blooming in one site near the river and it was covered in some of the most amazing bees… Here are a few of them.

We started looking for bees early in the morning. In a sheltered area in a glade I found these beautiful orange Lipotriches bees collecting pollen from Cenchrus grasses. Most bees are solitary and gather pollen from plants to provision a nest where they lay eggs. This is what the Lipotriches were doing.

A pair of Lipotriches bees foraging on pollen from Cenchrus grass

The most striking bee we found was this Carpenter Bee (Xylocopa sp.) that had the most incredible bright blue eyes! It flew around quite aggressively occasionally chasing off other Carpenter Bees that ventured too close to its patch of flowers.

Blue-eyed Carpenter Bee!

The most common bees visiting the flowers were various species of Leafcutter Bees (Megachilidae). These are bees that cut circles from leaves and use them to construct their nests by joining them up and lining a tube. They are also among the most elegant and beautiful of bees… They also fly very fast and zip about nervously from flower to flower so I had to be both patient and fast so as to capture some photos of them.

A Leafcutter Bee approaching the flowers

There were several different kinds of Leafcutter Bees around, including this large grey species:

Leafcutter Bee - note the yellow underside of the abdomen - that's where these bees carry pollen.

Another smaller Leafcutter Bee species

Leafcutter Bees are good at "tripping" flowers - bending them down to get more nectar out...

There were hundreds of bees flying about at the same time. Some of the bees chased each other away, but some of them were happy to share the flowers…

Leafcutter Bee (above) and Macrogalea bee (below) feeding near each other.

Feeding from flowers lower down was this interesting solitary bee species in the Halictidae family… beautiful with its black-and-white stripes…

A Halictid Bee weaving about the Crotolaria flowers.

More from the world of bugs soon!

Hello – many greetings from the wet Serengeti plains in Northern Tanzania. Just wanted to share this photo of a very special butterfly called the Saffron Sapphire (Iolaus pallene).

Watched this little fellow whirling around a kopje. They lay their eggs on parasitic plants that grow on large trees… The ‘tails’ on this butterfly actually function as a false-head encouraging predators to grab for the wrong end while the butterfly makes a hasty escape!

More from the world of bugs soon!

Greetings from Turkana in Northern Kenya. I recently visited one of the farms that I work with up here and was very pleased to find the coriander (cilantro) flowering. This plant is a common and delicious herb that is widely used in the cuisines of many different parts of the world…

Coriander flowers close-up

Many of us are aware of the role played by pollinators in producing fruits and other crops like beans, tomatoes, etc. However, even many of the spices that we grow are dependent on pollinators – and without them would not produce the seeds that are the basis of a valuable trade and make the food we eat much tastier and more nutritious!

The flowers of the coriander plant (called cilantro in America) are open and lay in flat heads called umbels. This means that they can be accessed by a wide range of pollinator species. Here are some of the insects that we found visiting and pollinating the cilantro flowers in Turkana.

A lycaenid butterfly and a cuckoo-wasp at the coriander flowers

The lycaenids are tiny butterflies, many of which are common in the drylands of Kenya. They can often be found visiting flowers where they sip nectar and check each other out…

Two lycaenid butterflies enjoying the cilantro flowers

Many different wasps were visiting the flowers. The Cuckoo Wasp was among the most striking with its bright green iridescent sheen…

Beautiful Cuckoo Wasp

Cuckoo wasps are named after their behaviour where (like the cuckoo birds) they lay their eggs in other wasps’ nests – they are parasites.

Of course the bees were among the most common and efficient pollinators visitors to the coriander flowers…

Braunsapis bee at the coriander flowers

The Braunsapis bees were the most common visitors to the flowers among the bees. They moved about a lot and we found them carrying lots of pollen too.

Happy Braunsapis busy on the flowers

A number of tiny Stingless Bees were also active – collecting pollen and nectar…

Stingless Bee at work...

All the hard work by the pollinators produces these beautiful seeds that we can flavour our food with!

Yummy coriander seeds thanks to the pollinators

More from the world of insects soon!

The forests and woodlands of Nairobi have been looking particularly lush and green for the last couple of months. This is all thanks to the more-than-generous ‘short rains’ that we experienced late last year. Nairobi is an interesting city for wildlife and nature as it has both forests and savannahs right next to traffic jams and high-rise buildings!

For those who have had the pleasure of visiting any forest or wooded area in Central Kenya over the past few weeks, a strange and beautiful phenomenon is on display.

Scattered here and there in the forests are isolated trees that are draped with shimmering silk. The trees marked in this distinctive way are Elaeodendron buchananii, a common tree of the dry evergreen highland forest and riverine woodland. This species also occurs in the Mara region and parts of Western Kenya.

Elaeodendron tree covered in silk

What makes them stand out at present are the beautiful sheets of silk that drape the trees, which can also be mostly defoliated. The silken sheets stretch over the entire tree, typically covering the trunk as well as the branches and what leaves/twigs are left.

The silk is spun by a veritable army of gregarious caterpillars of a group of insects know as ‘Tent Moths’. These moths, in the genus Yponomeuta, have their own Family within the Lepidoptera: the Yponomeutidae.

A view of the caterpillars enjoying their silk tent

The Tent Moths are distinctive in that they live in social aggregations and often completely cover the Elaeodendron trees in Eastern Africa. The caterpillars spin the silk from special glands and move about the tree within its protective confines. Elaeodendron trees are also poisonous and this no doubt confers some added advantage to the caterpillars.

The caterpillars are present on the trees for a few weeks and will then pupate in an aggregation, often sheltered by a branch or on trunk. Occasionally they may enter leaf-litter or shrubbery close to the tree. From these pupae a smallish grey moth with spots on its wings will eventually emerge and start the whole process over again by mating and laying eggs on the host trees.

Adult Tent Moth (Yponomeuta) (Photo by Martha N. Mutiso)

This phenomenon is really impressive and represents a massive investment made through the efforts of many tiny individual insects working together. Insects may be small, but working together they can have a big impact on the world!

More from the world of insects soon!

Dear All – many greetings from the hot, remote desert in Northern Kenya…

Lots to catch up on here but firstly I would like to thank everyone for reading this blog and sending in your kind comments.

A few days ago I visited the Kerio Valley in northwestern Kenya. It was a hot, sunny day so I decided to stop and rest in the shade of some giant fig trees by a stream…

A cool stream flows through the Kerio Valley

As I was sitting by the stream I noticed some of the rocks were covered with what appeared to be insects…

Who are these mysterious bugs gathered on the rocks?

Hmmm... What are all those little red knobs?

I took a closer look and was blown away by what I found – one of the most bizarre and wonderful insects in the world – the Stalk-Eyed Fly!

Bizarre and wonderful - The Stalk-Eyed Fly!

Yes, those are the flies EYES on the ends of stalks. This bizarre and wonderful arrangement is thought to be the result of sexual selection. Basically female flies chose males based on the width of their eyes. The wider the eyes, the sexier the fly seems. As a result, this amazing structure has come to be.

I watched the Stalk-Eyed Flies gathering on the rocks and leaves by the stream. There was a lot of jostling and showing off by the males…

"My eyes are bigger than yours..."

One of the Stalk-Eyed Flies eyed me as I was photographing it and rubbed it’s front legs together… (you can guess what happened next!)

Hmmm... you look tasty!

It landed on my knee and started licking the sweat off me! You can see it’s amazing mouthparts extended in the photograph below:

Oooh - that tickles!

It was joined a few minutes later by a larger fly (that did more than tickle) so I had to shoo them away…

A larger fly on my knee...

The fly returned to its perch on a leaf and posed obligingly for more photos…

Bizarre and beautiful Stalk-Eyed Fly!

Best wishes to all for the New Year and more from the wonderful world of bugs in 2012!

Dear All
Greetings – just back in Kenya after various travels. There is a sunflower on the breakfast table and I watched a honeybee visited it this morning in the dreamy African sunshine…

Sunflower in morning light

Honeybees love sunflowers!

The honeybee was after pollen – here is a close up of the anthers:

Anthers - the part of the flower that bear pollen

The honeybee lifts itself into the air and hovers, gently combing the pollen from it’s body into the pollen baskets on it’s legs.

Honeybee combing pollen into it's pollen baskets while hovering.

Without honeybees, the sunflowers would not be well pollinated and would not produce the sunflower seeds that are made into oil and many other useful and delicious things. The honeybees on the sunflowers are both beautiful to watch and also to know that they are making the sunflower seeds happen through pollination.

The honeybees collect the pollen for their own use. They feed it to their larvae, which helps them grow into healthy strong bees. The sunflower produces lots of pollen, and the honeybees spill it and rub it around as they move about the flower. This results in pollination. Both honeybees and sunflowers benefit from this arrangement. A truly balanced partnership (or love affair!) from Nature.

More from the world of bugs soon!