Greetings fellow Foxies,
 In mid-October I saw a small gleaming structure like a pearl-laden pendant attached to a dead quandong twig that I thought was an empty pupal case. The pearls were eggs accompanied by a dumpy insect that I thought was a type of scale. Wrong again!
The insect was a flightless female moth, that had laid the eggs after emerging from a pupal case inside the silky and hairy frame. 

​The insect was a flightless female moth, that had laid the eggs after emerging from a pupal case inside the silky and hairy frame. I found two information sources

• This Butterfly House blog. Clouded Footman Anestia ombrophanes
• My Pestguide Bioblitz report: They are the caterpillars of a very interesting moth, Marbled Footman, Anestia ombrophanes Meyrick, 1886 or Anestia semiochrea (Butler, 1886) (Lepidoptera: Erebidae). The two species may well be the same species described about the same time by two entomologists. The species is native and widespread but rarely observed in the Southern part of Australia. The caterpillars are black with a complex pale-yellow pattern and a row of pink spots on each sides and covered in long black hairs. They feed on primitive plants such as: Lichen, Green Algae (Bracteacoccus species) and Black Algae (Gloeocapsa magma). The adult female has a length of about 1 cm. She is wingless and flightless and has a large grey body with pink spots. The female stays near her cocoon, and the male copulates with her there.

​I was aware of flightless female wasps that dragon orchid flowers mimic to fool male wasps to pollinate them in a fruitless attempt to mate. But flightless moths! Amazing.
As strange as it seems, flightless females can carry more eggs than those with wings but need to be well camouflaged to avoid predators and have a good dispersal mechanism for the many emerged young.
I took the egg mass home to take better closeup images, and discovering that the female was still alive, left it in a safe place.
When I looked again a week later, there were lots of teeny caterpillars hanging down from silken threads, presumably waiting for a wind to disperse them.
I quickly made up a buffet of various plant materials but suspect that they all crawled away. Such is life.

Greetings Fellow Foxies,
​​Yesterday I noticed honeybees clustering around cracks in a single Marri tree. My first thought was that the bees must be pretty desperate to drink the astringent reddish kino that oozes out of marri trunks and branches (kino was used by Noongars as an antiseptic and for treating stomach disorders).
 
It then dawned on me that I was surrounded by marris covered in kino deposits but the bees were only on one tree trunk. The following images reveal my discoveries as I peeled away about a centimeter of layers with a pen knife.
​​After shooing off bees and removing an outer layer of loose dead bark, I discovered droplets of honey-coloured sweet nectar oozing out with surrounding bark stained black and bright blue in one case, by a skin fungus growing on nectar-rich bark.

A bit further in was a tiny (3mm long) cigar shaped object at the top of the flow. This is an insect pupa (note the head and remnants of legs on the pupa case), that was still in the soup stage prior to reforming as an adult. Judging by the copious nectar flow, it is likely that the pupa had drowned.

​Further in was a defined oval hole of a burrow that opened out into a frass (poo) filled chamber right on the boundary between the bark and sapwood. This cambium layer contains the tree’s plumbing system where water (going up) and sugar solution (going down) is situated.
 (Random comment: this is why trees die when they are ringbarked).
 
When I mistakenly penetrated the sapwood, red kino immediately welled out and started to become gummy.

The conclusion is damage by a beetle or moth larva  borer that specifically targets the marri cambium layer causing sugars produced by the tree to flow out as nectar.
 
Large deposits of red kino on marris comes from damage to the underlying sapwood as described in this blog
​

Greetings fellow Foxies,
Over the years I have reported on sucking insects such as lerps, psyllids, scale and mealybugs, many of which have formed an alliance with ants by secreting a sugary liquid that attracts them to keep predators away.
 
Recently I found a more active association on a brown mallet at Newman Block. I noticed what looked like a termite gallery creeping up the smooth mallet trunk and was intrigued that termites would attack intact sapwood. When I scratched open the gallery wall, I noticed that it was more like cardboard than clay and that ants rather than termites poured out. This was reinforced by ants running up my leg from their nest in a rotting branch at the base of the tree that I happened to be standing on.
Undaunted by this setback, I investigated further and noticed scale insects feeding on the bark under the cover.
I returned to the spot another three times to collect more samples to take photographs and samples  to show to various experts I had approached. Each time the damage had been repaired, and ants poured out again (sorry ants but science must progress). The last time I noticed that the repaired section consisted of grass seeds that were germinating in the humid conditions.
 
An answer to my queries come via the WAISS (Western Australian Insect Study Society).
Here is a copy of a reply from Dr Brian Heterick at the Western Australian Museum)
“The ant is in the genus Papyrius (Subfamily Dolichoderinae, the same family to which the meat ants belong). The species is not clear from the photograph, but the group needs revision; there are several named species.
Papyrius ants are known to tend butterfly larvae that produce sweet secretions, so their also tending scale insects that produce honeydew is no surprise. This genus of ants is also associated with trees, and their nests constructed of frass and plant fibres are readily identifiable. They also nest in soil, often around tree trunks. 
When at Curtin I received occasional reports of these ants nesting in ceiling spaces and frass falling down from the ceiling on to carpet, so they can be a (very minor) nuisance, especially in country areas. 
The scale insect looks as though it may be in the Family Coccidae (soft scales).”
 
So there you are, by providing a secure and moist ‘house’, the ant colony gets a free honeydew supply.
To see more images click here

The reference above to ants tending butterfly larvae is a dark example of deception of noble ants by devious butterflies. This was described in the August edition of the WAISS newsletter.
 
“Larvae of particular moth species begin life as parasites of homopterans (the sub-order Homoptera includes aphids, cicadas and leafhoppers).
Once the larva reaches a certain stage of growth, it leaves its homopteran hosts and awaits an encounter with a meat ant, Iridomyrmex purpureus. Upon discovery, the meat ant picks up the larva and takes it into the ant nest.
The larva spends the rest of its development in the galleries of the ant nest. For food, the moth larva eats the ant larvae, yet the adult ants don’t seem to object. 
As if in payment for their safe lodgings and all-you-can-eat buffet, the caterpillars produce a liquid from their rear ends that the adult ants find irresistible. The unfortunate ant, blinded by his partiality for liquor, overlooks the fact that it is produced entirely at the expense of his (her) own larvae devoured.
 
So these dreaded ant swarms that destroy picnics and climb into you undies also get their come-uppance.
 
For those wishing to join or know more about WAISS click here.

​Greetings Fellow Foxies,
A year ago I spotted a wandoo in Candy Reserve that had large strange pits in its trunk and didn’t think too much about it until I found another example in another reserve. In this case a large branch had fallen an affected tree many years ago, leaving beautifully patterned wood after the bark had fallen off.

​Pits on the living tree are like inverted oval cones, and the damage extends up the tree to the youngest branches.

​On close examination I could see the tree’s annual growth rings on the sides and a small hole in the heartwood at the base. The sapwood was clean and clear of fungi indicating that an insect was the primary cause.
When I cut a section trough a pit I found a small (about 3mm diameter) burrow leading from the base into a more extensive gallery system in the middle of the stem.

Enquiries have failed to produce an identification
There are similarities to wandoo crown decline as fungal canker was present in the heartwood but there are clear differences.

• This is very rare and hasn’t spread to any adjoining trees.
• The sapwood is healthy.
• I could see a ring of chew marks on the outermost sapwood layer surrounding pit which suggests that some insect comes out of the basal burrow to feed regularly.
• There must be successive generations of the insect, as indicated by the growth rings in the pits and the continuation of damage on the youngest branches

 Apart from cutting down a 200 year old tree or camping out by it and do nightly inspections, I can only ask if any of my readers can help solve this intriguing mystery
For more images click HERE