March 21 2019
I have been trying to help the endangered Monarch butterflies by providing them with habitat, milkweed plants. The milkweed leaf is where they lay their eggs and what the caterpillar eats.
Unfortunately, the Monarch isn't the only thing that eats milkweed. The oleander aphids have a taste for milkweed as you can see below
These parthenogenic parasites are major pest. They show up and begin to suck the milkweed's fluids and begin to make more aphids. And they are parthenogenic which means they don’t need a mate to produce more aphids.
They are like tiny, bright yellow Tribbles. And they will damage your milkweed.
This year, I have reinforcements: the aphid wasp L. testaceipes . They don’t just kill aphids, they lay their eggs inside the aphid and the young wasp eats the aphid. (Oh, the horror) I spotted a aphid wasp on a milkweed leaf. And the next day i saw the wasp in action. The wasp relentlessly attacked the aphids until all the aphids had been hit.
The video is a little long (about 14 minutes) The watch the wasp lay eggs in every aphid it could find. Check out how the aphids were acting towards the end. They seem a little off. The wasp wanders off knowing it's work here is done.
The oleander aphids love milkweed, but they hate drosera. Turnabout is fair play. The drosera love aphids. Tasty, tasty aphids
March 22 2019 The aphids took a wrong turn.
I had just put some aphids on the drosera filliformis and the other drosera. I didn’t notice until I looked at today’s pitcher plant videos, but there they were: aphids. I had a milkweed stem covered with aphids that i rubbed against the the drosera. Chances are some fell off and wandered into a few pitcher plants. One ended up in a Judith Hindle and another was found swimming in a bugbat pitcher.
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