With Summer have come the Lady Bugs (or Ladybirds; family Coccinellidae) despite the persistent and unrelenting drought some of the insects manage to survive.
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These whimsical-looking predators are plentiful on the citrus, ferns, vegetables, and sunflower trees.
Coccinellids are typically predators of Hemiptera such as aphids and scale insects, though larvae and eggs of their own species can also become prey when alternative food sources are scarce.
Members of the subfamily Epilachninae are herbivores and can be very destructive agricultural pests. Introduced species of Coccinellidae (such as Harmonia axyridis or Coccinella septempunctata in North America) out-compete and displace native Coccinellids and become pests in their own right.
The main predators of Coccinellids are birds, but they are also the prey of frogs, wasps, spiders, and dragonflies. Their bright colors discourage some predators from making them a meal. This phenomenon is called aposematism and works because predators learn by experience to associate certain prey phenotypes with a bad taste.
Another defense is known as reflex bleeding. With reflex bleeding an alkaloid toxin is exuded through the joints of the bug's exoskeleton, triggered by mechanical stimulation (such as a predator attack).
We've Read:
Florida's Drought Expands and Intensifies as Most of the State Experiences Moderate to Extreme Drought Conditions
We've Read A Lot of Bad Things About Trump as his Presidency
Came Unhinged This Week
If the current Republican stonewall holds, Mr. Trump may get away with the most egregious abuse of presidential power since Richard Nixon’s Saturday Night Massacre in 1973. In those days, too, most Republicans reflexively rushed to the president’s defense. But not all.
Attorney General Elliot Richardson and Deputy Attorney General William Ruckelshaus resigned rather than fire the independent counsel, Archibald Cox. Six Republicans joined all 21 Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee to move articles of impeachment. Republican senators like Howard Baker were relentless in demanding, “What did the president know and when did he know it?” And when the end came in 1974, three Republicans — Senator Barry Goldwater, the Senate minority leader Hugh Scott and the House minority leader John Rhodes — went to the White House to tell Mr. Nixon he had lost the support of his party.
Are there even three principled Republicans left who will put their devotion to the Republic above their fealty to the Republican Party?
I fear the answer to that question.
Attorney General Elliot Richardson and Deputy Attorney General William Ruckelshaus resigned rather than fire the independent counsel, Archibald Cox. Six Republicans joined all 21 Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee to move articles of impeachment. Republican senators like Howard Baker were relentless in demanding, “What did the president know and when did he know it?” And when the end came in 1974, three Republicans — Senator Barry Goldwater, the Senate minority leader Hugh Scott and the House minority leader John Rhodes — went to the White House to tell Mr. Nixon he had lost the support of his party.
Are there even three principled Republicans left who will put their devotion to the Republic above their fealty to the Republican Party?
I fear the answer to that question.
Okay, the firing of FBI Director James Comey looked bad. And when the president stunned him, pierced him with his fangs, wrapped him in a thick cocoon of impenetrable webbing and left him to hang there for days, that timing was also poor. It doesn't seem as though it was what the FBI wanted or what the deputy attorney general wanted, either. . . And the president is not Nixon. Nixon fired people on a Saturday, whereas this happened on a Tuesday. . . I think of the many norms that are still going strong as the digestive acid begins to eat its way through my flag pin. . .
My grandfather warned about hucksters spouting populist themes but manipulating people and institutions to achieve the opposite. They pretend to be on the side of ordinary working people — “paying lip service to democracy and the common welfare,” he wrote. But at the same time, they “distrust democracy because it stands for equal opportunity."
They invariably put “money and power ahead of human beings,” he continued. “They demand free enterprise, but are the spokesmen for monopoly and vested interest.” They also “claim to be super-patriots, but they would destroy every liberty guaranteed by the Constitution.”
They bloviate about putting America first, but it’s just a cover. “They use isolationism as a slogan to conceal their own selfish imperialism.”
They need scapegoats and harbor “an intensity of intolerance toward those of other races, parties, classes, religions, cultures, regions or nations.”
They invariably put “money and power ahead of human beings,” he continued. “They demand free enterprise, but are the spokesmen for monopoly and vested interest.” They also “claim to be super-patriots, but they would destroy every liberty guaranteed by the Constitution.”
They bloviate about putting America first, but it’s just a cover. “They use isolationism as a slogan to conceal their own selfish imperialism.”
They need scapegoats and harbor “an intensity of intolerance toward those of other races, parties, classes, religions, cultures, regions or nations.”
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