Dobsonfly, Gerid, More on Decomposition, Falling Blossoms

Another noon day stroll/ wade in the Woods. I noticed here and there beautiful catalpa blossoms falling into the water. The "cotton" was falling abundantly from the cottonwood trees and their seeds were floating all across the flooded Woods. In patches there were lots of white miniature bell persimmon blossoms looking like they've been floating on the water for a few days. Under one largish persimmon tree there were also somewhat mysteriously hundreds of fresh green mature persimmon leaves on the ground. They were without blight or injury and looked to have been freshly stripped from some part of the upper canopy by a bird or other animal. Very odd.

There were also more predators! I saw one water strider gerid and one Corydalid Dobsonfly. The Dobsonfly was just finishing off metamorphosis and eclosion and was drying its wings. I picked up the piece of wood where it had perched and watched it for 15 minutes.

I wondered about this individual. It did not seem like the Woods had been flooded long enough for it to have hatched from an egg and gone through full development to an adult. I wondered if it may have gone through all the late summer, autumn, winter and dry early spring in diapause, partially developed and waiting for inundation to return for completion of its development.

Are these partly developed diapausing predators the first early arthropod control species for the exploding population of mosquito wrigglers? What are the first agents that can begin to naturally suppress or slow down the mosquitoes? Could one keep mosquitoes down to lower abundance by importing early predators earlier? What if you brought in a few hundred water striders or gyrinid whirligig beetles a week or two earlier than they typically get going?

A flock of blackbirds (grackles?) were investigating the wet woods.

Entering through the SW gate and walking along the southern fence line, there was an interesting mosaic of wet areas of forest, some with standing water adjacent to other larger, slightly raised, dry areas that looked never to have been inundated. This should set up a mosaic of soil organisms too. Along the inundated paths, earthworms and micro-arthropods will be reduced. But they will be able to rapidly recolonize from adjacent dry refugia. Prediction would be a very different pattern of decomposition and richness, abundance, diversity of decomposing organisms in this mosaic contrasted with the broader areas of solid inundation fifty meters north into the Woods.