The owner would be happy to have us back out there. Has anyone stepped up to the plate to do TCR this year?
Kurt -----Original Message----- From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: Monday, April 02, 2012 2:44 PM To: Kurt L. Menking; Mixon Bill; Cavers Texas Subject: RE: [Texascavers] leafcutter bees And home to the next TCR? One can only hope! Mark -----Original Message----- From: Kurt L. Menking [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: Monday, April 02, 2012 2:40 PM To: Mixon Bill; Cavers Texas Subject: RE: [Texascavers] leafcutter bees Paradise Canyon, the home to several TCR events has several large colonies of leaf cutter ants. They're all in the newer developed areas. They seem to have declined in the past few years, probably due to the drought. It will be interesting to see if they rebound with the decent rains in the past few months. Kurt -----Original Message----- From: Mixon Bill [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: Monday, April 02, 2012 2:33 PM To: Cavers Texas Subject: [Texascavers] leafcutter bees Many of us have enjoyed watching parades of leafcutter ants, such as can be seen in Bustamante Canyon in northern Mexico. Don't think they get very far into Texas. Here's a curious things from Jim Conrad's Naturalist Newsletter about leafcutter bees, which I'd never heard of before. You can sign up to get his e-mail weekly newsletter at www.backyardnature.net/news/natnat.php Very rarely anything about caves, but lots of interesting nature stuff, especially about plants and birds. -- Mixon JIM CONRAD'S NATURALIST NEWSLETTER Issued from the woods not far from Natchez, in southwestern Mississippi, USA April 1, 2012 ***** LEAFCUTTER BEES On my last day in the Yucatán I untied the rope that for so long had been suspending my backpack from the hut's ceiling, hopefully out of mind for nest-seeking rats and mice, and took my old backpack in hand. Ashes from daily campfires had settled all over it so I stepped outside and gave it a good whack. The resulting cloud was half ash and half green tatters of dried, coiled-up leaf-parts stuck together into tube- like affairs. The leaf tatters surprised me. But, I knew what they were, for back in 2006 during my stay at Genesis Retreat in Ek Balam, Yucatán, the Maya staff there had showed me the same thing. You can read about that encounter and see the leafy, tube-like item at http://www.backyardnature.net/yucatan/jo_olon.htm A young Maya woman had told me that the green leaf- tube was a collection of nests stuck end-to-end, and that the tube construction itself was known by a special Maya name, which was pa'ak. The creature inside the cocoon was Jo'olon. I was told that a bee made the nest, but I hardly believed it. But, now I believe her, for once I had disturbed all those nests in my roof-suspended backpack, hoards of bees came complaining, thumping against me and entangling themselves in my hair but never stinging. And they were surely the most unusual bees I've ever seen, for instead of carrying clumps of pollen on their back-leg "baskets," they transported it on hairs covering the entire bottoms of their abdomens. With their golden-yellow abdomen bottoms they look like dimly lit fireflies. You can the pollen-dusted lower abdomen on a bee entering its pa'ak cocoon, one stuffed into one of my backpack's looped belt-tips, in the hut's dim light, so it's a grainy picture, at http://www.backyardnature.net/n/12/120401be.jpg A rear view of the same bee showing golden pollen stuffed inside a green pa'ak tube is shown at http://www.backyardnature.net/n/12/120401bf.jpg So, this was my last Yucatán identification challenge for volunteer IDer Bea in Ontario. Here's what she came up with: It's a Leafcutter Bee. Many times we've spoken of leafcutter ants, but this was something new. Leafcutter Bees, I find, are members of the genus MEGACHILE, and despite my ignorance of its existence that genus is one of the largest among bees, home to well over 500 species and over 50 subgenera. A list of insects of Río Lagartos, Yucatán includes eight species of Megachile leafcutter bees, but I can't say which species is shown here. Of leafcutter bees I read that, exactly as we see with our pa'ak tubes, Megachile nests typically are composed of single long columns of cells constructed from cut-out leaf sections. Females place pollen or a pollen/nectar mix in each cell as food for the egg laid there, then the cell is capped so that a wall separates that cell from the next one. The larva hatching from the egg eats the food supply and after a few molts and maybe a period of hibernation spins a cocoon and pupates, emerging from the nest as an adult bee. Males are typically smaller than females and emerge before them. Males die shortly after mating but females survive for several weeks, building new nests. What a fine last discovery to end my Yucatán days! ---------------------------------------- The winner of the rat race is still a rat. ---------------------------------------- You may "reply" to the address this message came from, but for long-term use, save: Personal: [email protected] AMCS: [email protected] or [email protected] --------------------------------------------------------------------- Visit our website: http://texascavers.com To unsubscribe, e-mail: [email protected] For additional commands, e-mail: [email protected] --------------------------------------------------------------------- Visit our website: http://texascavers.com To unsubscribe, e-mail: [email protected] For additional commands, e-mail: [email protected] --------------------------------------------------------------------- Visit our website: http://texascavers.com To unsubscribe, e-mail: [email protected] For additional commands, e-mail: [email protected]
