Bhigwan, Kadabanwadi Zone, Pune

A smorgasbord of photos from my trip to India: first, the Bhigwan area painted stork rookery (exact location withheld 🙂 ); next, a safari in the savannah-like Kadabanwadi Zone; a few photos from our boat trip in Bhigwan lake to see migratory waders; and some photos from the Nayanta university campus.

Unfortunately, I did not get a chance to use my actual macro photography setup, largely due to mistakes on my part; and I didn’t get a lot of time to look for bugs. It’s amazing how many interesting situations were seen during that short time. I really really need to come here and dedicate some time to macro bug shooting.

Also, I didn’t have the lenses needed to take good bird and wildlife photos. But please enjoy what I did take!

The trip to Bhigwan and Kadabanwadi was with the directors of the Wildlife Research and Conservation Society, Pune: https://www.wrcsindia.org/. They are doing amazing work and I encourage you to donate to them, or if you can, you can shop their wonderful items.

Kumbhargaon: Agnipankh guest house

I first thought this was a type of barklouse, but iNaturalist suggests Trialeurodes, the greenhouse whitefly, in

Order Hemiptera
Suborder Sternorrhyncha
Superfamily Aleyrodoidea
Family Aleyrodidae

This would make it a rather destructive pest.

A gorgeous but sadly recently expired robberfly (Asilidae, probably subfamily Asilinae):

The palm tree next to the guesthouse had a bunch of these scale insects, probably genus Ceroplastes, the wax scale insects. these too can be fairly destructive if found in sufficient numbers.

If you’re not familiar with scale insects: the larvae are mobile, until they find a nice location on a plant. At this point, they become sessile, that is, immobile. They lose all unnecessary organs, such as wings, antennae, legs, eyes, and distinct body parts. In that sense, their life history is similar to that of coral.

However, there is some confusion about this identification that I’m trying to resolve. In particular, is this actually a scale insect or a mealybug? This particular photo seems more like a scale insect. However, please read my comments on the next photo.

EDIT: as described below, these are probably indeed scale insects rather than mealybugs, it’s the wasp that is probably Anicetus or Metaphycus rather than Anagyrus.

But never fear, where there’s a way, there’s a wasp! I managed to capture this lovely wasp in Encyrtidae, which iNaturalist suggested was genus Anagyrus, in the process of ovipositing in one of the many insects on the leaf. The wasp larvae as they grow will eat the insect that the eggs were laid in, and kill them. (The distinction between parasitoids and parasites is that a parasitoid usually kill its host, while a parasite will not).

HOWEVER, Anagyrus is a parasitoid of mealybugs, rather than scale insects. So perhaps the previous one is actually a mealybug rather than a scale insect (deciding between them is tricky); or this isn’t an Anagyrus (although I’m fairly sure this is indeed Encyrtidae at least); or maybe some Anagyrus species are scale insect parasitoids. Still investigating, will update this as I find out more.

~~While Anagyrus has a world-wide distribution, it’s not clear if this species is native or introduced specifically for pest control.~~

EDIT: Okay, it seems that the hosts are indeed scale insects, while this Encyrtidae wasp is probably not Anagyrus, but genus Anicetus or Metaphycus instead. They do look like this, but are indeed parasitoids of scale insects.

Note that both Anicetus (https://www.waspweb.org/Chalcidoidea/Encyrtidae/Encyrtinae/Anicetus/index.htm) and Metaphycus (https://www.waspweb.org/Chalcidoidea/Encyrtidae/Encyrtinae/Metaphycus/index.htm) appear to have no species that were first described in India. This suggests that this wasp was specifically introduced by humans to deal with scale insect pest control.

EDIT: comment by bnormark on iNaturalist, https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/348998302

Parasitoid faunas of scale insects, like host ranges, are poorly documented.

https://scalenet.info/scalesplace/india/ceroplastes/

for C. rubens:

Encyrtidae

			
Anicetus annulatus | Bartle1978
Anicetus beneficus | Bartle1978 Suh2019b
Anicetus rarisetus | XuHe1997
Anicetus rubensi | XuHe1997
Encyrtus infelix | MilleHeCa2016
Metaphycus | TavareSaDa2019
Metaphycus bowensis | TavareSaDa2019
Metaphycus gerardi | TavareSaDa2019
Metaphycus varius | TavareSaDa2019
Microterys kotinskyi | Bartle1978

		

for C. floridensis:
Encyrtidae

			
Anicetus beneficus | CABI2019
Anicetus ceroplastis | CABI2019
Anicetus quintanai | MarinLCi1996
Cheiloneurus gahani | MarinLCi1996
Copidosoma | PerezFe2024
Diaphorencyrtus | PerezFe2024
Diversinervus elegans | CABI2019
Metaphycus angustifrons | MoghadWa2024
Metaphycus ceroplastis | TavareSaDa2019
Metaphycus claviger | TavareSaDa2019
Metaphycus eruptor | TavareSaDa2019
Metaphycus flavus | TavareSaDa2019
Metaphycus floridensis | TavareSaDa2019
Metaphycus fusiscapus | TavareSaDa2019
Metaphycus helvolus | PerezFe2024
Metaphycus lounsburyi | TavareSaDa2019
Metaphycus marensis | PerezFe2024
Metaphycus zebratus | TavareSaDa2019
Microterys clauseni | CABI2019
Microterys flavus | CABI2019
Microterys nietneri | AboKafMoAl2020 BasheeAsRa2014 MyartsRu2011 RugmanFoGu2010 SengonUyKa1998
Microterys speciosus | CABI2019
Psyllaephagus | AboKafMoAl2020

		

And so on; you can explore with the ScaleNet links. But all the reported host ranges are likely radically incomplete.

With that in mind, here’s one more image of the host insect species taken nearby:

Painted stork rookery (and bugs found there)

This was an amazing experience. Activity, cries, flying, settling, all happening.

I apologize for the poor photo quality in the next few photos. There was a wasp behaving strangely on the other side of a long puddle. I took a bunch of photos on the assumption that this was a wasp, it had to be doing something interesting. After looking closely at the photos, I discovered that the wasp was a Pompilid aka spider wasp, and I had completely missed that she was leading a paralyzed spider back to her den as for for her babies. The spider was a wolf spider, and blended in with the mud.

In the end, it’s not clear to me if the wasp was actually able to lead the wasp to her burrow. Perhaps the mud was too difficult to walk through, perhaps the spider wasn’t paralyzed and was able to fight back. I did lose track at some point.

I got a lot of (quite poor) photos of this spider, but I don’t know how to pin down the identification. I’m going to guess Lycosidae at least as a start, but I’m not sure of even that.

This one is a lovely wolf spider:

Compare its abdomen with this mamma! This is only the second time I’ve managed to get photos of a wolf spider mamma with her babies on top.

I’m awful with butterflies, but iNaturalist tells me that this is Zizeeria karsandra, the Dark Grass Blue.

There were lots and lots of these dragonflies around. They have the interesting Latin binomial of Brachythemis contaminata, and also the rather poetic common name of Ditch Jewel.

iNaturalist tells me that this moth is in Crambidae, aka Crambid snout moths.

Kadabanwadi Zone

This is an area I had never heard of before. It consists of a savannah like terrain and rolling hills and is absurdly beautiful in its own way. They’ve started offering jeep safari rides there. Mammals that populate the area include chinkara (gazelles), hyaenas, and wolves, although the wolf population has been decimated by canine distemper unfortunately.

Again, I really did not have the right lenses for bird or wildlife photos, so apologies for the quality of the photos.

Not sure what shrike this is:

Ashy-crowned sparrow-lark, Eremopterix griseus if you want to get fancy.

This was fascinating. I’ve never seen a social spider nest. It was windy and there were people waiting, so I couldn’t get a good photo of the spiders that made the nest, but it seems likely that they belonged to Stegodyphus cf sarasinorum, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stegodyphus_sarasinorum. Note that other species in the genus have been described nearby, e.g. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/349907336_Stegodyphus_semadohensis_A_new_species_from_family_Eresidae_recorded_from_Satpuda_Maharashtra_India_Arachnida_Araneae_Eresidae, and I have no way of distinguishing.

Note that Eresids are cribellate spiders, which means that they have an organ called the cribellum that “whips” the strands of silk coming out so it becomes tangled, which in turn can get their prey tangled up in it. Other spiders that make webs to catch prey would typically use special strands of sticky silk; cribellates do not do that.

I’ve never even seen a spider in Eresidae before, and I’ve always wanted to, so I have to come back with the proper equipment and take some time to delve into this! My notes below are the result of some interested googling, I’m of course not an expert. Also, this is my first day off in a while, so I’m enjoying spending the time writing about what I know :-).

https://roundglasssustain.com/species/social-spiders was a good article about them, along with the wikipedia article.

Colonies are predominantly female: 80-90 females vs 5-10 males. Just as in eusocial structures, the males are mostly active for mating only.

These spiders have several fascinating aspects, and have had several important papers written about them. For one thing, they are NOT eusocial (no spiders are eusocial), and yet they seem to have several aspects of eusocial societies.

For one, it is claimed that they have differentiation of tasks. ~~This is not based on caste, as in eusocial insects, but on “personality” — braver spiders take on bigger prey, while less brave ones may perhaps help more with helping take care of spiderlings.~~ Wait: this paper appears to have been retracted (https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3735259/). So I don’t know if this true or not, or how true. The retraction account is here: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7944085/. This paper seems to do an analysis of the data: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/eth.13229, and all that is clear to me is that nothing seems to be clear to anyone.

Another paper seems to show similar results, further muddying the waters: https://doi.org/10.1093%2Fbeheco%2Farz032

That notwithstanding, there are interesting discussions about why one spider should be the first to attack, thereby taking the bulk of the risk, such as here https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1993CaJZ…71.2220W (the first to attack get more time to eat?).

Which is another aspect that eusocial societies have: they do have cooperative behavior. Tackling prey (and the dangers therein) is a shared task, and the food is then shared with everyone, not just the spiders that took the risks. Taking care of all spiderlings is shared, and the carers are not just taking care of their own offspring, but everyone’s. In fact, some of the females engage in matriphagy, the gruesome (to our human imagination) process of the spider turning herself into food for the younglings.

Also, as gravid females are less able to obtain food, other members of the colony actually drag food into the interior of the nest so they can feed.

The lack of castes and reproductive specialization is what distinguishes these colonies from truly eusocial ones, although there are hints that some females seem to reproduce more. In similar species in the genus. less than half the females actually breed (https://academic.oup.com/beheco/article-abstract/19/3/605/185732?redirectedFrom=fulltext).

This paper discusses foreign spiders found in the nests: https://bioone.org/journals/the-journal-of-arachnology/volume-51/issue-1/JoA-S-22-004/Aliens-in-the-society–foreign-arthropods-and-small-vertebrates/10.1636/JoA-S-22-004.short — they appear to prey on individual S. sarasinorum spiders.

In addition, Uloborus ferokus spiders are commensal with these nests, presumably without too much predation. They build their own orb webs anchored on S. sarasinorum nests, help themselves to some extra food that gets caught (a little kleptoparasitism never did anyone any harm), and also apparently have extra protection from the Idris wasp (Scelionidae) which is an egg parasite of U. ferokus.

Female sunbirds are happy to grab some of the S. sarasinorum nest material to build their own nests — if you’ve ever seen a sunbird nest, this will be no surprise.

Successful nests do not grow larger than others: rather, they have more females who leave and found their own nests.

I sincerely hope this is quite sufficient random info on social spiders.