506 June Non-Bee Pollinators with Madeline Potter

Hello Listener, 

This month, we discuss non-bee pollinators with Madeline Potter.  We discuss beetles, flies, moths, and wasps, what flowers they like, and how we can support pollinators in our home gardens.

 This month, we skipped the Native Plant of the Month, Bug of the Month, and Garden Tips of the Month. 

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The Garden Thyme Podcast is brought to you by the University of Maryland Extension. Hosts are Mikaela Boley- Principal Agent Associate (Talbot County) for Horticulture, Rachel Rhodes- Senior Agent Associate for Horticulture (Queen Anne's County), and Emily Zobel-Senior Agent Associate for Agriculture (Dorchester County).

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Transcript

Garden Thyme Podcast Transcript: S5:E06
  
Non-Bee Pollinators with Madeline Potter

Note: The Garden Thyme Podcast is produced for the ear and is designed to be heard. If you are able, we strongly encourage you to listen to the audio, which includes emotion and emphasis that's not on the page. Transcripts are generated using a combination of speech recognition software and a human transcriber and may contain errors.  

:Upbeat Music:

Mikaela      

Hello, listener. Welcome to the University of Maryland extension presents the Garden Time podcast, where we talk about getting down and dirty in your garden. We're your hosts. I'm Mikaela.

Rachel

I'm Rachel.

Emily

And I'm Emily.

Mikaela

And in this month's episode, we're really excited to welcome our guest and colleague, Madelyne Potter, Faculty Specialist for Entomology and Integrated Pest Management with the University of Maryland extension. Welcome to the podcast, Maddie.

Maddie

Thanks for having me.

:up beat Music:

Mikaela

This is just a reminder that we currently have an open survey for all listeners. Whether you've listened to all of our episodes or this is your first time, we developed an evaluation to find out if the information we share on the podcast has made a difference in your practices at home. We promise it's a short, easy five-minute survey, and we even have exclusive podcast stickers to give to those who participate. We are all so thankful for the feedback, and we appreciate you tuning in for the podcast. You can take the survey at go. Umd. Edu/gardentime. That's garden T-H-Y-M-E. We'll include the link to the survey in the show notes, as well as share it on our Facebook page.

Rachel

All right. June is a buzzing, buzzing month because we get to focus on Pollinators and National Pollinator Week is coming up June 17th through June 23rd. So to help us get ready for all the beautiful and unique pollinators, we have Maddie joining us to tell us what she likes about pollinators and what we can do to encourage pollinators in our landscape. Maddie, when it comes to intake pollinators, bees and honeybees always steal the show. But what are some of the other insects or animals that also can pollinate?

Maddie

Yes. A lot of the times, like you said, we think of our classic bees and butterflies when people talk about pollinators. To start us off, we'll bring up some animal pollinators, non-insect pollinators. So that can include birds, bats, reptiles, believe it or not, rodents, lemurs, and marsupials. And I wanted to pose the question here, what do you think is the largest pollinator, other than humans, because of course, we have human-mediated pollination that goes on in the world. But what do you think is the largest animal pollinator?

Mikaela

Are we talking about vertebrates or invertebrates?

Maddie

We're talking about vertebrates.

Rachel

Here, Maddie comes out of the gate with her fun facts. Did you know that we like fun facts here?

Mikaela

We love fun facts. Maddie's setting us up perfectly. I was going to guess like, mouse or lizard or something.

Emily

That's a good guess. I'm going to go bigger. I'm going to think That's what I think that some large cat, like a tiger or something, can pollinate by rubbing and rolling around in the safari.

Rachel

Oh my God, could you see that? Little tiny bobcats sticking their heads in flowers rolling all over the place. I'm going to with some type of big lizard or snake.

Mikaela

Maybe flying foxes.

Rachel

Oh, that's a good one.

Maddie

According to my research, the largest recorded pollinator is a black and white ruft lemur. So I'm sure there's some inadvertent pollination that goes on with larger animals as well. But that's the largest pollinator that I could find, which I thought was interesting.

Mikaela

Larger than what I thought would be used.

Rachel

Oh, yeah. Me I thought it would be small, like a bat.

Maddie

There's some big bats out there, too. There are.

Mikaela

That's what I was thinking.

Maddie

Those are our vertebrate pollinators that maybe we might not know about, but there's also other invertebrate pollinators, so some of our insects species, for example. So I'm definitely going to go into depth today on some of our insect groups we may not think are pollinators, such as beetles, moths, flies, and wasps. And just some general fun facts we may or may not already know about animal-mediated pollination is over 80% of flowering plants depend on some form of animal pollination, which is really cool. 87 of our leading global food crops depend on animal pollination, things like cocoa, coffee, apples, melons, squashes, and even things like biofuel crops like canola. And we You may have heard the classic every one in three bites, food is dependent on some animal pollinator.

Rachel

That's really cool. I love fun facts.

Mikaela

I was just going to say Maddie's Fitting and Perfect because sometimes all we do is fun facts.

Maddie

Exactly. Yeah. And when we're talking about non- bee pollinators. There was a 2016 research paper that came out that estimated about 25 to 50 % flower visits in agricultural systems are due to non bee pollinators. So that really leads us well into today's topic, where I'm going to highlight some of our non bee and non butterfly pollinating insects.

Mikaela

While I was just reading this article from Agronomy News from UMD just about beetle pollination. It's really interesting. I've never seen it before, so it's really fascinating.

Rachel

I feel like beetle beetles are the golden retrievers of pollinators. Everybody should love them because they're haphazard and they just get in there and move around and force you to love them.

Maddie

Definitely.

Mikaela

In fact, here's a fun term that maybe Maddie was going to drop on us later, but cantharophily, which is the cross-pollination of flowers by beetles. Oh. So there's your fun term. That is a fun word. That's crazy. So Maddie, this leads us to our next question. Do you have some examples of common plants that use non bee pollinators?

Maddie

Yeah, definitely. There are a lot of prehistoric type plants. Some of our first flowering plants, including magnolia, which is really interesting. Talking about beetles, we predict they were one of the first insect pollinators millions of years ago, along with flies, potentially. There's more and more research coming out. We're finding really cool fossils, insects deposited in Amber, to learn more about pollinators long, long ago. And so beetles have a really long relationship with plants like magnolias and ginkos for pollinating those types of plants that we still have today, and they still have those really strong relationships. Other plants that are commonly pollinated by non bee and non butterfly pollinators include things like herbs. We also have a lot of our crops, like we alluded to earlier. A lot of our cacao, coffee, apples are really big, especially with moth pollination at night, as we're learning more and more about. And then a lot of our native plants. Some of our pollinators are generalists, and then some are specialists, where we have a particular insect species that only pollinates a small group of plants or even just one species of plant. A really cool one that we may have heard of before is the relationship between a wasp and a fig.

Maddie

So we have two native fig species in the United States, and each of them has one specific species of wasp that is needed to pollinate them. So definitely look into that. I've heard there's a really cool documentary about fig wasps, if you want to learn more.

Emily

I think they were my Bug of the Month last June for Pollinator Week.

Maddie

Awesome.

Mikaela

I was like, Emily, I know we've done an episode where you explained one of them.

Emily

Yeah, I did fig wasps because it's just so cool. It's wild. So as Rachel alluded, beetles are charismatic. We have lots of species of them. People love them, but people also dislike them. I mean, we're getting to the point where I've already started getting calls about the dreaded Japanese beetle and how it's ripping up people's rosebushes. So what are some examples, Maddie, of some of our beneficial pollinating beetles that people should be on the look at for?

Maddie

Yeah, definitely. So a lot of our beneficial beetles go unnoticed beetles can range in size to being pretty big and visible, like our Japanese beetles or even our Hercules beetles. But we have some really tiny types of beetles, like weevals can get pretty small. And so some common beetle pollinators that we can find throughout Maryland, especially, and maybe throughout other parts of North America, include beetles like our soldier beetles. You'll commonly find them on golden rod, typically bright yellow in color, leatherly type wings, all different types of scarabs. So scarabeida includes Japanese beetles. It's that same beetle family. But there's also this type of scarab called the bee-like flower scarab. And if you look up a photo of it, it's really cute. It's very fluffy and hairy. So you can imagine that is advantageous to be a pollinator because lots of pollen will stick to its hairs. It has little stripes on its elitra or top pair of wings, so it could look bee like with those stripes. There's also other really fun common names for this family of beetles called tumbling flower beetles, typically found on plants in the carrot family. We have longhorn beetles.

Maddie

We have even a family of beetles that are called pollen beetles. We have leaf beetles, rove beetles, which are also known predators in our landscape. So lots of different beneficial roles within our ecosystems. Checkered beetles, as I mentioned before, weevals. Those are really fun. And blister beetles as well could even help with pollination, too.

Mikaela

Oh, my gosh, Maddie. I'm dying reading this information about the tumbling beetle. It's like, even though it's a strong flyer, if its defense mechanism would approach, is that it just falls.

Maddie

It just falls over.

Mikaela

It just starts tumbling off the plant. I'm dying laughing. Yeah, I can just Yeah, I can just see it. It just falls over.

Emily

I think I'm in love with these Bumble bee beetles because they are literally just so fluffy. But then they have those cool hard beetle elitrochels, so they're just really cool.

Rachel

They're adorable. So funny.

Maddie

Yeah, a lot of our beetle pollinators are known as pretty messy, the way that they feed and they collect pollen on themselves. And so a lot of the flowers that they pollinate have adapted to have pretty thick flower petals or leaves, because a lot of these beetle pollinators will also chew their way through petals and leaves as they're also maybe searching for some of the protein-rich pollen that they feed on, or sometimes they'll feed on some of that nectar substance as well. So I find that interesting. I know that when I've gone around, when magnolias are in bloom and look into those really thick petals, they're also cup-shaped and cave-like, which a lot of beetle pollinators like. I've usually found a lot of different small black weevals inside of there hanging out. And so don't be alarmed if you find beetles on your flowers, if you're seeing little holes. A lot of our plants have adapted to tolerate this small amount of damage. And there's also some really cool evolutionary mechanisms where we find that they have adapted ways to have the beetles chew on parts that aren't as important and to keep them away from maybe important reproductive parts of the flower.

Maddie

So evolution has done its work and can usually tolerate a lot of these beetle pollinators munching their way.

Emily

That's really good to point out because I know a lot of people get worried when they start to see insects feeding specifically on the flowers of plants, because the reasoning behind putting a lot of these plants in people's yards is they want the flowers and they want it for the pollinators. So if people didn't realize that these were the pollinators, they might get really worried about them chewing on them. So that's a great point to make. It makes me think of when people get mad about caterpillars chewing up their milkweed, and I'm like, No, that's the point of the milkweed. And they're like, But it's for the butterflies. I was like, It's for the baby butterflies, which are the caterpillars. So great opportunity community to do some educational outreach there about why we put these things in our landscape and why we want things eating them.

Maddie

Right, exactly. And the importance of identifying insects before considering them pass. Now, you obviously don't have to be an insect ID the experts. There's a lot of great apps emerging that can get you started on your insect ID. Also, you can reach out to UMD Ask extension, send in a photo, and we can help with identification as well. But a lot of the time, it's really only a Mostly 1-3% of all insect species are really past. When you're finding an insect on your plant, pause for a moment, get curious, because it might be one of our beneficial insects.

Rachel

I think that's really good to point out, too, because... Well, So you can automatically assume that the insect that they're seeing is not beneficial, that it's going to be a problem when maybe that insect needs that plant for its life cycle. And with the ax extension and plant ID apps, it's so much easier to access information and to find out what they need.

Emily

Was there anything else you wanted to say about beetles and beetle pollination, Maddie?

Maddie

Yeah. So generally, when we were thinking about flowers for our beetle pollinators, I mentioned with a great example is our magnolia flowers, which create a cave or bowl-like atmosphere. Beetles like to have a little more a habitat they can hide out in, especially for temperature regulation. But there's also other beetles that will prefer more exposed flowers, smaller flowers, like we can see small clustered flowers on goldenrod, sporea, and spicebush. Our beetles are pretty clumsy fliers. So a lot of research has shown they prefer flowers that have a great flat big landing pad for them to land on to, to hang on to when they're feeding on that pollen and getting the nectar all over their body.

Rachel

I have a really good picture of a banded longhorn beetle on Kletra, and I'm just like, buddy, what are you doing there? You're never going to be able to get anything out of there. But he's still just got his whole face in it.

Emily

He just really wants to enjoy the pretty flowers, too, Rachel.

Rachel

Exactly. Who am I to discriminate on this beetle?

Mikaela

So you mentioned how beetles are clumsy fliers, and I know they're attracted to stinkier flowers, which made me think of paw-paws. And I know they're a pretty stinky flower, but I've heard flies are also really good pollinators of some of those stinkier-smelling flowers. What else can we know about flies as pollinators?

Maddie

Other than our stinky flowers like poppa, our flies are actually really great pollinators of our crops as well. There's There's been a lot of research, especially into this group of fly pollinators called surfid flies. They also have a common name as hoverflies or flower flies. We have lots of different species, over 100 just in Maryland and over 800 in North America. So again, this group of surfid flies, so just one family of flies. We found that their pollination services alone contribute to $300 billion annually, so US billion dollars for our pollination services, which is pretty crazy. So they could pollinate things like mango, cashe, avocados. A lot of flies are being looked at to commercially pollinate things like onion, chive, carrot, strawberries, and blackberries. Other than our bee pollinators, which can be really great for those things, we can thank a lot of our flies as well for the yummy foods we like to eat.

Emily

You just named a bunch of foods that I really like.

Mikaela

I was going to say I had no idea that they were dominantly pollinated by surffid flies. But that name also rings a bell because I know we're talking about pollination, but surffid flies have other beneficial qualities about them, correct?

Maddie

Yes. So like a lot of our insects, they can play multiple roles within our ecosystems. We can call these ecosystem services. And so other than pollination, surffid flies are also predators. At their larval or immature stage within our green spaces. This is a really fun thing to look for. Typically, the larva of our surffit flies are called maggots, really small. They're worm-like, they're blind at this life stage, and they typically don't have any legs. So they're worm or grub-like. And if we have a high population of aphids somewhere within our green space, if you look closely, you'll likely spot one of these surfid fly larva. Since they are blind, they move around erratically, especially once they get a hold of a soft-bodied insect that it will feed on like an aphid. It will stab that aphid and suck out the insides like an insect smoothie. And so this is a really beneficial thing for us within our landscapes. They help to lower pest populations naturally without the use of chemicals.

Rachel

Yum, an insect smoothie.

Emily

Mikaela hinted at the fact that flies are attracted to our smellier flowers. So what are some other flowers that we would see that these flies are pollinating, and/or what are some of the common characteristics of plants that would be pollinated by flies?

Maddie

Yeah, so since flies are fairly diverse, a lot of the research that's been done for fly preference when it comes to flowers and their characteristics has to do with one of the two main fly pollinator groups. So we talked about surffids. Surffid A is the family surffid flies, and the other main group of fly pollinators are called beeflies. They belong to the family bombility. And when it comes to our hoverflies, they typically prefer yellow or white flowers that are open during the day, typically small, open, well-exposed. So these are flowers and typically plants like things that belong to our carrot family, asters, buttercups, mustard, rose, and even carnations. And if we're thinking about ways we can support fly pollinators in container beds, we can think about container herbs. They'll also love to pollinate a lot of our herb plants as well. And with our bee eyes. They typically like purple, violet, blue, or white flowers that are open and tubular. They are hovering when they fly. These are really fun to spot. They typically hang out pretty low to the ground. They're also pretty distinct with their elongated proboscis that they can't retract. It just looks like this long straw sticking out the front of their face.

Maddie

They're typically really fluffy like a bee, but they just have one pair of wings, versus our bees have two pairs of wings. And so they're hovering around. Some people will describe them as nectar thief, because they're pretty tricky. Once they find a flower, they're doing that hovering flight, and sometimes they don't get close enough to the flower to actually pick up a lot of pollen. Now, some pollen does get on them, which is why we relate them to pollination. But sometimes their proboscis is long enough, they're hovering further enough away that they can just get that nectar and then quickly fly away.

Emily

Awesome. I almost wonder if the reason why bees get so much good cred for being pollinators is because all these other insects look so big and fluffy that we see them and we think that they're bees. This beefly and the bumble bee beetles and stuff like that. If we're like, Oh, it's big and chunky, it must just be a random bee.

Rachel

That's so true, Emily. Because how many people are sitting there staring at their plants, trying to distinguish between a bee, a beefly, a bee beetle? Yeah.

Emily

Well, even the flower flies. I can't tell you the number of times people have sent me stuff and it's got a flowerfly. Maddie's shaking your head. She knows exactly what I'm talking about. Like, photoshopped over honeycomb. And I'm like, that's not the right insect. First of all, not a A honey bee. Second of all, it's not even a bee. So I give you a pass for your photoshop skills, but that's not right in any way, shape or form. Anything else you want to talk about with flies?

Maddie

I'll give an honorable mention to We also have feather-legged flies, a really cool one to look up, as you can imagine with their common name. They have featherly-type legs. They're also a known parisitoid of squash bugs, leaf-footed bugs, and stink bugs. So as gardeners, corners. That's a big plus, right? We don't love those squash bugs all the time. So we have feather-legged flies that are parisitoids and pollinators. Super cool.

Emily

She's got the boots with the fur, guys.

Rachel

Oh my gosh. Yeah, man.

Maddie

She's got the fancy stuff on her legs. Oh my God.

Rachel

I mean, she does have an apple bottom, too. Maddie, we've talked about beetles, we've talked about flies, and these are really common daytime pollinators. But I feel like we're missing a whole group of pollinators that hang out and do the job at night time. Can you talk a little bit about those?

Maddie

Yes. So when we're talking about night time pollinators or nocturnal pollinators, a lot of the time, those are our moths. So they belong to the same order as our butterflies and our skippers, known as Lepidoptra, which is the second largest insect order behind our beetles. And luckily, our moths are out there for us because pollination is a 24/7 job. As you may or may not know, some of our flowering plants bloom only at night or, say, at twilight. And so we need insects that are out there in the evening to help pollinate those particular plants. Luckily, we have over 11,000 moth species in North America, and that's in comparison to the over 700 butterfly species we have. And most of our nocturnal moth pollinators are moving around at great distances as well. So a lot of our moth pollinators are migratory, and some research has shown they can travel over 100 meters in a single night. And so this can be really important for pollination, and then especially with the effects of climate change, when it comes to gene flow between our plants and facilitating genetic diversity within our plant communities. This helps with resiliency, making sure that our plants have that diversity so we can always have a plant surviving under different extreme conditions that we're likely facing and going to face when it comes to climate change.

Maddie

Our moth pollinators are typically carrying that pollen on their bellies. It's really fun to take a look at moths. They typically have a thicker body with lots of hairs, also known as seedy. And moths typically get a bad wrap as looking dull or boring. A lot of people think they're just brown or tan. But if you really look And then, again, to Moth Diversity, there's almost four more times as many species as butterflies, we can see lots of different colorful moths. I think one of the classic ones that people really like in the summertime are luna moths. There's So lots of different polypheemoth moss that can look really pretty.

Rachel

I mean, I feel like luna moth does really get a lot of attention in the summer, but there are some really beautiful moths out there that aren't brown.

Mikaela

So I have an interesting technical question, Maddie, and I know a lot of moths don't have mouth parts as adults. So what attracts them to the flowers that they're pollinating?

Maddie

That's a great question. So one example Another example of a moth without mouth parts is the yucca moth, and it still has a really strong relationship with, say, the Joshua tree. And from what I know, I probably would have to look into it a little bit more. Really interesting story about obligate mutualism. So both the Joshua tree and the Yucca Moth need each other. And the Yucca Moth typically will lay their eggs on the Joshua tree. And so with that type of relationship evolved over time, they're searching for that plant already as a great host plant for their young. Likely, a lot of mating will also happen around that host plant as well. And so even though they might not be looking for nectar resources, maybe even with some of our other moths without mouth parts, they've evolved to know that particular plants, like our flowering plants, are great places to lay their young. So their young, their caterpillars, have great food for their nutrition. And likely has to do with great mating sites as well.

Emily

I think a lot of times people forget about all those little micro-moths that we have, too, that are all probably suing lots of this pollination. But because they're not large and charismatic the way the lunar moth is, we don't always notice them, and they don't stand out very much. Some of them have very limited small wings because of how tiny they are, too. So we touched a little bit on the types of flowers and plants that they would have, but what are some general characteristics that our listeners could look for to take a guess on whether or not a plant was a nighttime moth pollinating plant or not?

Maddie

Some traits we can take a look at is the color of our flowers. Typically, the paler or whiter the flower is, that's great for reflecting sunlight. And we know that a lot of our moths travel or orient themselves at night by the sunlight. Also, cup or tubular-shaped. Typically, flowers that are on the heavily fragrant side for attracting a lot of our moths. And of course, thinking about flowers that are open at twilight or night, things like our hone circles or evening primrose is a really good one as well. We definitely don't want to forget that some of our moss are out during the day. So as we talked earlier about our sphynx moss, also known as hummingbird moss, there are some that are active during the daytime and can be really fun to look out for. Commonly mistaken for hummingbird because of how large they are in their hovering-type flight.

Emily

Okay. Are we ready to hear about the jerks of the insect world that well hate but actually do something good for us? That's right. I'm talking about you wasps. Now, nobody likes a wasp crashing their party. I think I get more phone calls about how to remove wasps, or is this a wasp, or how do I make sure no wasp stings my obnoxious child who's poking at a wasp nest. But we know that they're beneficial as biocontrol, and Maddie is going to tell us all about how amazing of pollinators they are, right?

Maddie

Yes. I know wasps have a bad reputation, but luckily, the more we learn about them, and we can learn about wheeze, so we can reduce the chances of getting stung by some of them. They're actually very beneficial for our environment, even those yellow jackets. I know, especially yellow jackets, people tend to steer clear of or want to find ways to get rid of them. But some studies have even found that yellow jacket species can be more efficient pollinators than honey bees.

Rachel

Now, that's a fun fact right there.

Maddie

And a lot of the times, wasps and bees can get mistaken for one another. If it's not that classic yellow jacket. Just some general tips at ways we can differentiate our bees from our wasps is our wasps generally have a pointed lower abdomen, a narrow waist, and they're typically less hairy than our bees as well. So a lot of the time when they're pollinating, it's inadvertent transfer of pollination. A lot of our wasps adults feed on nectar as their entire diet or as a part of their diet. And so they're looking for that sweet sugary substance. And then with them moving around within that flower, they'll get some of that pollen on their body and then inadvertently become a pollinator within our landscapes.

Emily

So they're not feeding on the pollen itself the way some of these other insects that you've talked about are. It's more 100 % accidental in their case.

Maddie

Right. Exactly. There is a really interesting wasp family that I found out about. It's actually a subfamily of Vespidae, where they're called pollen wasps. That's where we have an exception to the rule, which I found quite curious, where they actually provision their larval brood cells with pollen and nectar. They are feeding on pollen and nectar, especially their young. Sometimes they're known as the vegetarian wass, because a lot of our wass will typically provision their young with other different types of insects, so they're more carnivorous. But this particular subfamily, Masarnine, don't I don't know if I'm pronouncing that correctly, but they're known as pollen wasps. And so always that fun exception to the rule within the insect world, for sure.

Emily

I love it.

Rachel

So some of these wasps that we have that are inadvertently pollinating things are Are they really there just to be a paracetic wasps to other insects or to prey on other insects and they're just, Hey, by the way, I move some pollen around.

Maddie

So some So many of the time that is the case because a majority of our wasps are carnivores, but they don't solely feed on other insects and arthropods. They do need to supplement their diet with some sugary substance. So sometimes that can be the nectar itself. Sometimes Sometimes they're also looking for other fruits, maybe our soda that's left out or something from our picnic, and even honeydew. So we've seen a lot of that with our invasive spot of lanternfly. Big honeydew producers, that's a byproduct of their feeding. It's a sugary substance. And so we have a lot of, say, spot of lanternfly or another piercing-sucking insect, that will typically attract a lot of wasps because they're looking for that sugary food.

Rachel

So I know what flowers I usually see wasps on in my own landscape, but do they have preferences to the flowers that they like to land on, just like beetles or our flies?

Maddie

Yeah, we've typically found they prefer white or yellow-colored flowers. We've also seen them have some preference for dull colorations, typically more shallow flowers with unusual odors. So we can think back to our flies and beetles that also like those unusual smells, and they like very concentrated nectar. So again, thinking back to how they are sugar lovers or have a big sweet tooth. Some of the plants that have been noted good for wasps include parsley, beard tongues, like our native foxglove beard tongue, goldenrod, which is a pretty big one for our pollinators, and mountain mint. But I'd love to hear, Rachael, about some of the plants you've seen wasps on.

Rachel

I usually see them on Boneset, a lot of goldenrod in the fall, sometimes some snake root. Well, those are white and yellow, right? So that's where they're gravitating towards. I think it's really interesting, though, that You said that they like things that have that high nectar value. So they like their Snickers bars, right? They like their candy.

Maddie

Yeah, exactly. They have that big sweet tooth.

Rachel

Yeah, I can relate.

Emily

I feel like we relate to that because this podcast is a lot about the snacks.

Rachel

Snacky Snacks.

Mikaela

I don't know if it bears saying, but to remind the listeners that these are wasps that are not interested in human beings. And short of trying to crush them in your bare hand, they're not going to go after you. They're not going to sting you.

Maddie

It's Right. Yeah. No, definitely. It's an important reminder that most of our wasps are not interested in humans unless you are threatening them in some way, which includes swatting, or if they land on you and you slap them on your skin, you are likely going to get stung. If you just let them be, if you have a wasp hovering near your picnic or your food outside, just try to keep that food covered when you're not actively eating it. Make sure you have tight seals on your trash cans that will also deter them. And any strong shampoos, perfumes, or scents can also attract some of those yellow jackets and things. But generally, when we're seeing them out in the landscape, they're on a mission to find food for their young. We They're not food for their young. Other types of insects are. And so they're out there trying to find other insects that we may consider pets, bring them back to their burrows in the ground. So there's a lot of ground nesting wasps, such as the blue winged wasp or thread wasted wasp. And so we may see them flying around, but again, they're on a mission to feed their young, not to sing your humans and pets.

Mikaela

I know the way I smell in the summer, I would probably attract the flies and the beetles. Just no fragrance can cover that.

Rachel

Same.

Emily

Or what did Arthur say last month? The puddling butterflies?

Maddie

Yes.

Emily

Pollinator Week is later this month. Do you have any suggestions on how people can get more involved with helping pollinators?

Maddie

Yes. There are lots of different ways that we can get involved with supporting pollinators. Even if you don't have a traditional yard, even if you don't like being around insects, we have some ways that you can be a pollinator ambassador or supporter, too. We can't talk about supporting pollinators without talking about climate change because lots and lots of research is coming out that shows that climate change is a major driver for pollinator decline. This affects things like the physiology or the insect body functions. Things like growth rate reproduction, foraging behaviors, overall survival rate, because insects, as we know, are ectothermic. They're cold-blooded, and so the temperature around them really affects their internal body temperature. They're highly susceptible to changes in the environment, such as climate change. It also affects things like phenology. When our insects are emerging, different seasonal activity shifts can be seen, and This can lead to mismatches between our pollinators and blooming periods. Availability of food can really be affected. Also thinking about migration patterns like with our monarchs, those are affected by climate change, and even rain shifts. We could see insects shifting into areas we've never seen them before. Now, that can either be a negative thing or a positive thing, depending on the environment and the type of insect, of course.

Maddie

Then we have extreme weather events like flooding, storms, hurricanes, droughts, those awful fires we are seeing out West. This is getting rid of a lot of our pollinator habitat. All of this really leads to ways we can support them. The first thing that we can do is to reduce or eliminate pesticide use or the use of other chemicals like fertilizers and herbicides. This is a really big one. I know that when I'm working with the general public and we get questions about insect pests. The first thing is always asked is, What can I spray to get rid of this insect pest? We're hoping as educators to teach people more and more about sustainable pest management management and how that lends into this idea of integrated pest management. Have you guys gotten a lot of questions about pesticides and what can be used?

Rachel

I just had somebody send me an email about pesticides to use on aphids on their lettuce. I was like, Honestly, I would just spray them with a hose of water and knock all the aphids off and then eat eat my lettuce. Just spray it down with some water every few days until they're gone.

Mikaela

A lot of the pesticide questions that I've gotten are more about fungicides, just a lot of disease pressure early, especially in March when we had all that rain. Now, I think it's died down a little bit because April has been a little bit dry, but yeah.

Maddie

Yeah. A lot of the time when it comes to our general pest pressure that we find in A lot of our home gardens or community gardens and green spaces can be taken care of with other control measures. Luckily, we can also learn to tolerate some of those pests, because if we really think about it in terms of our food webs, those paths are food for other animals, even say our caterpillars for our birds. Sometimes it's about tolerating a little bit of damage. As long as the overall health of your plant is pretty good, a lot of plants will recuperate and bounce especially because our insects may just have one or two generations per year. And so once those insects are done, you'll have regrowth and the health of your plant will come back. Also, coming back to that concept of identifying an insect before considering it a past, identifying an insect before spraying some chemical to make sure that we're not actually harming those pollinators or other beneficial insects that are out there. We may not like doing this, but A lot of the time we can hand-remove minor pests, especially from our vegetable plants.

Maddie

That's a really great sustainable way to get rid of some of those pest populations as well. As we've learned today, there are beneficial insects such as parisitoids and predators that will feed on a lot of those pests like aphids. If we just leave things be, we can observe and see how things are going, but we will likely spot some of those predators and parisitoids out there helping us out without the use of The next biggest thing we can do refers to habitat. When it comes to supporting our beneficial insects, it's about planting a diversity of plant species and also thinking about structural plant diversity. When we're thinking about species, we generally want to encourage planting native species that are well adapted to the local environmental conditions. They typically have evolutionary relationships with our native insects as well and native animals. A lot of research is showing that it's best to go with straight species versus cultivars for our natives. But of course, there's always an exception to the rule. There are some great cultivated native species out there. There's even some great non-native pollinator plants. It's all about looking at that science-based information to know what are the best pollinator plants to add to your landscape.

Maddie

Typically, we want to look at what area we are in. Sometimes we refer to that an eco-region. Then also picking the right plant for the right place. Typically, that means we are making sure that when we're thinking about a particular space, looking at the soil conditions, the water availability, the sun availability, because not every plant is going to love, say, a shaded area. Not every plant is going to love a full sun area. Always looking at the space you're planning to plant in and then looking at the preferred conditions for the potential plants you want to add. I mentioned about structural diversity. Not a lot of people think about this, but it's about adding all these different microclimates and microhabitats that can be created with different levels within 3D space. A lot of that can be created by adding different levels of shrubbery. A lot of our shrubs get forgotten within our landscapes, but flowers, trees, and shrubs are all important. When we have these microhabitats, we create different refuges in different areas for a diversity of insects to thrive in. You can think of it as a diversity of different habitats and houses to support those insects and also the food that they eat, so other herbivorous insects as well.

Maddie

If you already have a pollinator garden, what I would urge you to do is take a look at the species you currently have and make sure that you're planting for season-long bloom. What this means is to have something in your landscape, booming from spring through fall, because we want to make sure that nectar and pollen is available for all those beneficial insects at all different times of year. This helps to add climate resiliency to our landscape, too, because as I mentioned earlier, we're going to see changes in phenology when it comes to bloom time and the emergence of our beneficial insects. And so if you always have something blooming in the landscape, that food is always there for our beneficial insects.

Mikaela

These are awesome, Maddie. These are just great reminders and great reinforcing messages about what we can do. That's simple. I mean, these are backyard things people can do.

Maddie

And I do want to highlight and mention that we don't have to have a big green space to have a pollinator garden. There are a lot of unique ways we can add pollinator plants to small spaces. We can think vertically. So we have We have vining plants such as our Trumpet Honeysuckle that we can add. We can use container beds within our porches and our balconies. There are some really cool resources. I found one through the Maryland Department of Natural Resources that has a whole page on plants that are great for container beds. And so you can take a look at that list to see what pollinator plants would best grow in a container-type space. I was just curious, and I looked at myself if, say, a bee They would fly up several floors if you're, say, in a high rise or an apartment or condo. And from what we can find, they'll fly up to nine stories high, some of our bee species. And they've had some really good luck with green roofs in gardens. We might not see all of our pollinators up that high, but it does support some of those species and provides some great habitat in our more urbanized settings.

Maddie

Another thing we can think about is not only providing food for our beneficial insects, but also nesting and overwintering habitats. So thinking about supporting not only the active life stages of our insects, but the ones that the life stages where in the winter months, they're settling down, they need a protective place to be. And so that habitat can include things like fallen logs, brush piles, rock piles, leaves, so that classic saying of leave the leaves when you can. Bunch grasses also provide really great habitat for not only beneficial insects, but other animals as well. If we want to take it a step further, we can create a unique insect hotel, also known as Bee Houses, for our insects that like cavities to nest in. We can also consider reducing the amount of mowing we're doing within any of our lawn spaces or reducing the amount of lawn in general that we have, replacing it with maybe some more flowering plants. And overall, leaving as much unmanaged natural areas if we can.

Rachel

Those are some really great tips, Maddie.

Mikaela

So, Maddie, how did you get into entomology? That's such an interesting field for somebody to pick out out of so many.

Maddie

Yeah, that's a great question. So I used to be really freaked out by insects, actually. I did grow up with some really great experiences hiking and camping in the woods and interacting with insects. But as I got older, I thought it was a normal reaction to scream at an insect or to ask someone to squash it if I found it in my room. It wasn't until I was taking classes at College for Horticulture that I came across this Insect Pests of Ornamentals and Turf Course taught by Dr. Paula Shroesbury. I actually dreaded this course. I dreaded the insect collection aspect of it all. Even consider dropping it. But halfway through the course, after looking at insects under a microscope, seeing how many details such a tiny animal can have, the vast diversity, all the different roles they play in our ecosystems, it really just opened my eyes to this incredible world. I have to say it was also the effect of really positive and encouraging educators. Their passion really rubbed off on me, from someone who did not like insects to someone who wanted to spread the word about how amazing insects are to the world.

Maddie

And so that's really what I strive for with what I do today is to also give off that passion to inspire curiosity and care in others and really help For me, it's good to be able to get in touch with people to create positive experiences with insects. Because I completely understand if you grew up and had a really negative experience with a particular insect that you're just like, No, insects aren't for me. They're just going to sting and bite me. That's understandable. But there's also some really cool ways that we can get in touch with the big field of entomology, whether that be through art or even fashion, known as Eto fashion, or just getting involved with community gardens and seeing all those beautiful pollinators that we talked about today.

Emily

Awesome. Well, thank you so much for coming on the podcast, Maddie. We really enjoyed having you, and we hope that you enjoyed being here. Are there any great resources for our listeners if they want to learn more about some oddball pollinators or how to get engaged in Pollinator Week that you can recommend? Yes.

Maddie

In relation to Pollinator Week, they do have a main web page for that National Pollinator Week. It's pollinator. Org, so really easy to remember. They have some really great resources for how to get involved, whether that be locating an event near you or doing your own community Any science where you can say, use iNaturalist to snap photos of pollinators. That gets us some really great data of locality, phenology, and host plant use. So even just snapping a photo really helps us out with pollinator research. They also have a Pollinator Power Party, which is a five-day free webinar series that you can sign up for. If you want to learn even more about pollinators, that's available, too. Through our University of Maryland extension web pages. We have a web page on just about any common insect you can think of. If you want to learn more that way, too. Again, as we mentioned earlier, if you have an insect ID that you would like help with, you can send a photo through UMD Ask extension, which is a free service. And I want to put a plugin for National Moth Week as well, since we talked about mothss as pollinators.

Maddie

That is July 20th through the 28th, and that is to bring awareness to mothing, which is also collecting data on moths. And so you can set up your own mothing in your own backyard, in your own community space with just a light, a bucket or a sheet, and snap photos and collect that data.

Emily

Thank you so much for coming on, Maddie.

Maddie

Thanks for having me.

Mikaela

Well, that's all we have for this episode, listener. We hope you enjoyed it, and we'll tune in next month for more garden tips. If you have any garden-related questions, please email us at umegardenpodcast@gmail.com, or look us up on Facebook at Garden Thyme podcast. That's Garden, T-H-Y-M-E. For more information about the University of Maryland Extension and these topics, please check out the University of Maryland Extension Home and Garden Information Center website at go.UMD.ed/HGIC. Thanks for listening, and have fun getting down and dirty in your garden.

Goodbye.

 
  The Garden Time podcast is a monthly podcast brought to you by the University of Maryland extension, Mikaela Boyle, Senior Agent Associate for Talbot County, Rachel Rhoads, Senior Agent Associate for Queens County, and Emily Zobel, Senior Agent Associate for Dorchester County
 
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Emily

Goodbye. Goodbye. You want to keep going, Mikaela, or you want me to take over from you? Oh, yeah.

Mikaela

I can keep going. I thought I'd give somebody else the opportunity to talk.

Rachel

She's talked a lot today.

Mikaela

Yeah, that's right. We did a basic training Jeopardy, Maddie, which we do to prepare trainees for taking the exam. And I bunch of Rachel's Panamanian coffee. I was skipping across the front of the room. It was extreme, so I need to come down a little bit. Oh, man.