When people talk about natural selection, it generally gets couched in terms of organism versus organism, “Nature, Red in Tooth and Claw”, with direct competition for space, or food, or to avoid being food, or for mates, or for any number of other things. This is all well and good in places with an equitable, or at least relatively unvarying, climate. In the warmer parts of the world there may be occasional mortality from storms or volcanos or droughts or other natural occurrences, but mostly life really is all about the eternal struggle with other living things[1].
As we head towards the poles, however, things change. In the summertime, the livin’ is easy, with plenty of food, and water, and mates, and a climate that is not actively trying to kill you. But, the winter becomes something else again. Heading north[2], the environment spends longer and longer portions of the year being progressively more hostile to life. Water freezes and the cold of winter kills directly; food vanishes, because photosynthesis becomes impossible and scavengeable material gets buried in snow and ice; and then those that the cold does not kill risk death from lack of food. By the time you get up here to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan and parts north, the other organisms become almost incidental to your survival. Winter is the killer, the enemy that you must fight first, because if you can’t survive Winter, then you’re done, no matter how good you are at the conflict of life against life. All the venoms, spines, armor, camouflage, strength, speed, agility, or fighting tricks in the world won’t help you when the ice comes.
This year’s Christmas Nymphalid Butterfly is a Monarch. When Sam found it in the yard on May 19, 2012, she thought it was recently dead. It had no reaction to being held.
It was in fine condition, though. All of its head appendage and legs were intact.
I found this large caterpillar on August 31, 2012, crawling across the sidewalk on campus. How large was it? Well, here it is crawling on my thumb:
It’s certainly one of the Sphinx Moths (family Sphingidae), and one of the larger ones at that. It doesn’t have much in the way of distinguishing marks, aside from some stripes on its head,
On August 12, 2012, the whole family was bicycling along the trail that runs beside Portage Lake. As we were coming up on where the trail crosses the Pilgrim River, we ran into swarms of these little black insects:
I found these nearly-black spiders on August 11, 2012, nder the hatch leading to the old basement (although I could have found them there at any time, they always seem to be around in there). The first one is a male.
For something that is supposed to be so common, I certainly took long enough to find one. This is a “snow flea”, tiny little creatures that are known for coming out on top of the snow in the winter. I found it by walking around the house on a sunny day in early Spring (April 14, 2013), and looking closely at the snow for tiny black specks.
In March of 2013, we had been sledding at the Nara Nature Center and Trails at the east end of town, and had happened to spot a couple of small black insects walking slowly over the surface of the snow. These were winter stoneflies, and they had come from the Pilgrim River that flows through the park. Since the last time I photographed them was in 2008 and the pictures weren’t very good, I’d been wanting to rephotograph them. So, I went back to the river on March 30 to collect some more specimens. I collected two different kinds that day, one with wings that just barely covered its abdomen (and could probably fly);
On March 20, 2013, it had been pretty cold, and the snow was still several feet deep. But, the sun was shining, and so insects hibernating in spots that were in direct sunlight got above freezing. And some of them foolishly ventured out of their hidey-holes – to their doom. Like this unfortunate wasp that I found dead in the snow beside a sidewalk at work.
Sandy spotted this tiny moth (about a quarter-inch long) fluttering around the house on March 17, 2013. There aren’t a lot of insects active around here in March, so I had to take pictures.
This is probably an Indian Meal Moth, Plodia interpunctella, which is a pretty safe bet any time you find a small, bicolored moth indoors. Particularly if you find it at a time of year that moths generally aren’t flying.
We were spotting these smallish (less than a quarter-inch long), pale spiders off and on all through the winter of 2013. This particular one was found on an exterior door on a part that was covered by a snowbank on March 2, 2013. It was evidently running around under the snow.
