Apollo. Need information on the ecology of the species

I wanted to post here some photos of my own apollons and their biotopes in the Tambov region, but something doesn't attach. It looks like the site has reached the limit again... I'll do it later. Just the other day I'll try to get into the military training ground near Tambov - the main place of the local Apollons. An interesting report is expected...

to item 1-on Eastern Fennoscandia-may be useful DOI: 10.17076/bg19

https://sun1-86.userapi.com/c849432/v849432...G0guvl3FdbY.jpg
please identify the tops.

 
please identify the tops.

Jurinea cyanoides by idea.
but there are no tops as such,
so the cornflower of Sumy can be.

Gran Merci. This is yurinia, not cornflower. Here in the Penza region, almost only apollo eats on it.

This post was edited by t00m - 24.06.2019 14: 10

In the Ryazan region, adult apollo feeds on meadow sivets and oregano. Actually, he has nothing else to eat on the burnt-out wastelands.

I finally returned to the site. All cases were not allowed... I post a short report about the campaign mentioned above.


It was held from May 6 to May 8. I arrived in Tambov on the 6th, and here are my local companions: amateur entomologists Roman Ishin (AGG; right), and Alexander Zorin. He took us on a tour in his car, for which I thank him very much!


Roman and Alexander showed me a cool Apollo spot where I found some caterpillars of this type (I don't remember whose hand they were on ).


This place is a power line. A man-made biotope. For my research, this is an important fact, because "not everything is so bad", Apollo disappears not only from anthropogenic activity, but sometimes it helps him. I am waiting for other similar facts from you: where a person helped Apollo by creating power lines, clearings, etc. The forest was set on fire and fumes were arranged, which was inhabited by the Apollons... Such facts are very important.


Power grid workers cut down bushes... Do they know that they are helping a rare butterfly?


My companions actively caught horse beetles on excursions. Here's Roma at work. I wonder if horse beetles eat Apollo caterpillars. Who saw it?


Then I decided to go to the military training ground, and the other tourists went home.


There were also some Apollo tracks at the training ground. In places like this, for example. Although I expected more from him. But-there are few forage plants (Sedum telephium and Sedum album); maybe it's not so dry for these succulents here... Although I only looked at part of the polygon. The guard post was visible there, people were walking - I did not tempt fate...


Near the shooting range. I thought it would be quiet here in the evening, but suddenly they started shooting from a pistol somewhere not very far away! I had to leave the landfill and spend the night outside its territory.


My camp in the morning.


There were a lot of hare cabbages near it, but the clearing was too small, and the Apollons hadn't settled it...


I headed north, toward the old woodlands and burning areas marked on the satellite map I'd taken on the hike. The forestry department planted pine trees on all of them, and ploughed through them fairly, creating dumps - which the Apollo caterpillars, according to my previous observations, do not tolerate. The biotope is destroyed... But why not come up with planting pine trees by drilling and dipping a seedling into the hole? Why not create such a technique? Maybe there is already one on abroad... In the meantime, this is such a bleak picture.


And these are fresh furrows. The Apollons will never be here.


But along the edges, in small clearings untouched by forestry, the Apollo biotopes were preserved. Its tracks were often found here.


One of them.


I also shot other insects.


And so...

I spent the night in the forest, went further, but the glades were already too dry or, on the contrary, "meadow" - not the same... In the evening, I went to the Tambov-Penza highway, where I was picked up by Roma, who was passing through here with some passenger on his disinsection work. I spent the night at his house, before restoring my water balance well with beer and other drinks, in the company of Rum.
That was the trip.

This post was edited by Wild Yuri - 03/12/2022 18: 26

By the way, the very approach in our forest business is outrageous: to plant as many glades and other "empty" places as possible with the forest, so that it is solid - for mosquitoes. Biotopes rich in various grasses and butterflies are being destroyed... I understand foresters, fans of trees and cubature, but times are changing! And if there are rare species of plants and insects in the forest, you can not take away their biotopes! An environmental assessment should be carried out in the forest area before planting and furrowing anything. In general, it is necessary to prohibit forestry enterprises from planting trees in more than 80% of the forest area. Some clearings and burning areas must be left untouched. Environmentalists will tell you which ones... Ah, dreams! In the meantime, Apollo is being preserved by the military-a landfill and woodlands in the military zone that resemble Swiss cheese on a satellite map: almost the primary state of the forest that has not yet been given to the forestry department. Glory to the Russian army! And may it be forever.

This post was edited by Wild Yuri - 03/12/2022 18: 29

Yura, in the first photo, I'm on the right side of the mopping block for feeding geese

The Ukrainian army is much cooler in this case: where it stands, the forest disappears completely

I post a short report about the campaign mentioned above.


And these are fresh furrows. The Apollons will never be here.

This is not true !!!
2-3 years - all the furrows will be overgrown with a large cleaning agent and Apollo will be like mud. I don't think there is a telephium there.
Verified on June 15-16, 2019. Roma can confirm it.

Sergey, I have already responded to your email, but I will repeat myself here...
See the photo. A site in the Tambov region where Apollo tracks are found. On the left, where there are furrows, there are none, on the right, where there are straight lines, there are some. The amount of hare cabbage on the left and right is about the same. We are talking about a fairly large surveyed area - what is on the left, what is on the right, so random factors are excluded here. Moreover, I have repeatedly observed similar situations in other places of the Tambov region. And not once did I meet Apollo caterpillars in clearings with furrows.
These furrows are usually very high and run frequently. I have planted Apollo caterpillars in such glades and watched them. It turns out that it is difficult for them to crawl on such areas - they slip on the sand, overcoming furrows, lose energy from this. Any population is an energy system. Excess energy consumption leads to a weakening of individuals and an increase in the incidence of viral and other diseases. Apollo's caterpillars are quite prone to them.
Tell me, what is the frequency and height of these furrows in the clearing where you saw the Apollons? And are you sure that they lay their eggs there, and not just feed on nectar? I have often met apollons outside of egg-laying sites, in considerable numbers even in a damp meadow in the floodplain, half a kilometer from the biotope. I'd really like to see that furrowed clearing where the Apollons were. This is very important information. I'll come to the area in the spring to look for caterpillars.
Before that, I repeat, I did not meet Apollo caterpillars in heavily torn clearings and always observed them only in flat areas.

Yura, in the first photo on the right, I'm ripping up the stonecrop to feed the geese

Misspell... Fixed.

Yura, thank you for the report, but the open spaces outside the landfill are occupied by furrows by ninety percent, and there are very few forest primers and other planes that have not undergone reforestation - and, accordingly, are not furrowed. It is clearly not these flat areas that provide the mass of imago in the local clearings, which are completely furrowed. True, the glades of power lines (or gas pipelines) are regularly cleaned, and if there is a clean-up there, then after clearing it quickly resumes; but on the other hand, trenches with ruts are added. By the way, it is generally clear from the photo exactly where you were, but at a different point (not from your own) in the same places in the grass, for example, a butterfly with still soft wings (the only one for me on that tour) was marked among the furrows on a recent clearing. We would have found more if we had arrived a little earlier.

By the way, last year we checked the surroundings of the Lighthouse, where exactly the Hot Spots for Apollo for the next decades were killed (not counting the northern edge) by frequent self-seeding pine trees, which covered what was still a huge flat apollonian field with a rare young pine tree around the edges with a solid shadow. But apollo is still thriving as soon as you get off the highway on the dirt road to the north, where all the forest is now reduced except for a few trunks along the highway. It is not necessary to write off the entire mass of apollo in those parts on the pathetic edges of the clearings with their supply of clean-up (where one cut stretches along and across for kilometers) and on some forest gaps - where the forest, if it has survived, is not close and rather continuous). And we have to ride for imago more and more across the furrow in the endless clearing. And, more importantly, apollo mating occurs mostly among these furrows (primarily because this is where ninety-nine percent of the stonecrop grows), although not only.

Next, we have crawling tracks across the furrow-as with that tractor from the joke. False problem. The caterpillar and in the row spacing can look for a cleanout, because the female threw the egg not anywhere, but in the feeding place (by the way, when spawning, not avoiding furrowed areas). But even if the caterpillar is tempted to crawl across, by the time the clearing takes root in the sediment (and even more so in apollo), the furrows have long since softened the steepness of the slopes, are blackened or at least caked, although for the entomologist's boot, of course, they are still quite loose. And when the furrows in the clearing are fresh-no cleaning yet, no apollo.

Thank you, Andrey, for the information! It's also a matter of the height and frequency of furrows. Near Tambov, they are high and frequent. The plot in the photo is a classic one. There are no tracks on the left, and there are tracks on the right. I've seen a lot of such sites. There are no Apollo tracks on them or - single ones, along the edge. It turns out that we should also look at areas with furrows in the Vladimir region. The ploughshares of Leskhoz tractors are small, perhaps. In any case, we need to look at other apollo populations, in other places, and in the spring "walk" through the Vladimir region. I will try...

Here's another photo. Then everything will be more or less overgrown with grass, hare cabbage will be in the mass, but there will be no Apollo caterpillars here , only sometimes along the edge. Tested on old similar "cuts".

More photos. Biotope killed.

In the second photo, a very real prospect so far seems to be bereznyak, so here you can not discuss the problems of Apollo yet. The plot was waiting for a long time for plowing; it is clear that twelve-year-old pines did not grow after it, but earlier, and when laying furrows, these pines had to be bypassed (through a birch tree, they plowed recklessly).

In the first photo, – in my opinion, more or less the usual depth for a fresh furrow, fresh only such and seen (however, here the row spacing is narrower than on your main Tambov clearing-the one with the garbage on the lower edge). But over time, these furrows will do the same as no less deep fire-fighting trenches do-they will be greatly leveled. By the way, I can't make out exactly: in the third picture from the end, which you wanted to show that the border runs along the edge of the forest (there are no tracks on the left, but there are tracks on the right), there is a clearing on the left that has never been plowed at all? or is it-after all, the result of subsidence of typical Tambov region" high and frequent " furrows? I just personally did not come across any clearings in those places that were left for a long time without plowing and reforestation, or at least without spontaneous afforestation, which is not even hinted at in the photo.

Further, if there are no caterpillars on plowed clearings at all (even young ones), this can only be understood in the sense that they do not die in their youth, for some reason they are not able to crawl to the clearing just across the furrow, but they do not spawn there at all. This would mean that even females instinctively avoid furrowed areas when they drop their eggs. Even if we allowed for such a clever program, which is not easy in itself, we would also have to assume that after mating among the furrows (which I have often seen), the females will certainly get up – they are still practically not flying! - on the wing and fly to the side of the road (sometimes very far away!), so that the eggs will certainly be thrown there. All these, to put it mildly, stretch marks are unavoidable assumptions after the adoption of the version about the absence of caterpillars among the furrows. Unfortunately, I hardly ever visited Apollo stations during its caterpillar period, and a special trip to directly refute what I already think is improbable would not have paid off, to put it mildly.

In reality, in the far (from arrival) upper part of the above-mentioned clearing, the spawning behavior of females was undoubtedly noted this season. But I would agree that on the edges, in conditions of equal accessibility of the edge and plowed clearing, females will more often prefer the edge and even the roadside (I have repeatedly noted), but not out of concern for the legs of the caterpillars, but primarily because at the edge, in comparison with the open space, there is less visibility of the caterpillars, and the danger of overheating (due to shading at least some part of the day) and eggs, caterpillars, and food plants. Such a program may well have had time to form historically in this subspecies, but the reaction to modern forestry techniques is unlikely.

Therefore, the female (already half – lightened and able to fly and choose a place) is no less willing to lay eggs closer to bushes or small trees, even in the depths of open areas – whether in a clearing or in a clearing-with an equal density of sediment, rather than in the middle of a frying pan. I've seen it myself more than once, including this year in the Moscow Region.

Another thing is that taking into account the balance of effort and time spent by an entomologist, it is probably more cost-effective to search for caterpillars primarily on the outskirts than to limp along ditches. Accordingly, the illusion of absolute infertility of once-ploughed clearings may well have arisen due to an unconscious preference for the most passable areas for the entomologist when searching for caterpillars.

By the way, it is generally clear from the photo exactly where you were, but at a different point (not from your own) in the same places in the grass, for example, a butterfly with still soft wings (the only one for me on that tour) was marked among the furrows on a recent clearing. We would have found more if we had arrived a little earlier.

Andrey, there are several places where we were just to the west.
And in the second place, from our trip, I found fresh females about a week later.


This post was edited by AGG-06.11.2019 16: 22

Oh, I'll have to answer in detail...

In the second photo, a very real prospect so far seems to be bereznyak, so here you can not discuss the problems of Apollo yet.

Apollons fly in the Tambov region and in places with birch trees - where it is dry, in the redlands among pine forests. This place was just flown a few years ago. Overgrowth occurs slowly, and this is much less of a problem than a"sudden plow"...

In the first photo, – in my opinion, more or less the usual depth for a fresh furrow, fresh only such and seen (however, here the row spacing is narrower than on your main Tambov clearing-the one with the garbage on the lower edge). But over time, these furrows will do the same as no less deep fire-fighting trenches do-they will be greatly leveled.

Not very much. I've looked at the old ones, too. There, too, the grass begins to grow more strongly due to the change in terrain, which also does not favor the Apollons. And, I repeat - they slow down, slip when crawling tracks, which leads to significant energy losses.

By the way, I can't make out exactly: in the third picture from the end, which you wanted to show that the border runs along the edge of the forest (there are no tracks on the left, but there are tracks on the right), there is a clearing on the left that has never been plowed at all? or is it-after all, the result of subsidence of typical Tambov region" high and frequent " furrows?

The photo also shows the furrows... Yes-they are smaller, they plowed earlier with a less deep plow, the equipment was weaker, which I can say responsibly, because I have been walking in these forests for 30 years. However, there were no caterpillars in this clearing, which was well overgrown with hare cabbage. And on the right, on a flat area-were. And quite a few.

Further, if there are no caterpillars on plowed clearings at all (even young ones), this can only be understood in the sense that they do not die in their youth, for some reason they are not able to crawl to the clearing just across the furrow, but they do not spawn there at all. This would mean that even females instinctively avoid furrowed areas when they drop their eggs. Even if you allow such a clever program, which in itself is not easy...

Why, this is a normal program! Butterflies are very sensitive about where to lay their eggs and where not to. Any field entomologist will tell you that.

I would also have to assume that after mating among the furrows (which I have often seen), the females will certainly get up – they are still practically not flying! - on the wing and fly to the side of the road (sometimes very far away!), so that the eggs will certainly be thrown there.

Well, why so. They will stand on the wing, flutter around the clearing and choose places where it is better to lay eggs. They can fly quite far - sometimes several kilometers. Tested by experiment. I marked them with paint once in one season and let them go.

All these, to put it mildly, stretch marks are unavoidable assumptions after the adoption of the version about the absence of caterpillars among the furrows. Unfortunately, I hardly ever visited Apollo stations during its caterpillar period, and a special trip to directly refute what I already think is improbable would not have paid off, to put it mildly.

Well, then why write something on the topic? I am a biologist by training, I have a certain methodological base, I study everything and do not allow any understanding. I advise you to do the same.

In reality, in the far (from arrival) upper part of the above-mentioned clearing, the spawning behavior of females was undoubtedly noted this season.

Let us know where this clearing is located. In the spring I will study for caterpillars. Maybe the furrows are low and sparse... I need to see it.

But I would agree that on the edges, in conditions of equal accessibility of the edge and plowed clearing, females will more often prefer the edge and even the roadside (I have repeatedly noted), but not out of concern for the legs of the caterpillars, but primarily because at the edge, in comparison with the open space, there is less visibility of the caterpillars, and the danger of overheating (due to shading at least some part of the day) and eggs, caterpillars, and food plants. Such a program may well have had time to form historically in this subspecies, but the reaction to modern forestry techniques is unlikely.

It was formed historically on the terrain in sandy places, but it takes into account its differences - even, it would seem, in our opinion, small.

Therefore, the female (already half – lightened and able to fly and choose a place) is no less willing to lay eggs closer to bushes or small trees, even in the depths of open areas – whether in a clearing or in a clearing-with an equal density of sediment, rather than in the middle of a frying pan. I've seen it myself more than once, including this year in the Moscow Region.

On the pan borozzhennoy usually already pine trees rise, there is where to crawl into the shade! The problem is just changing the terrain.

Another thing is that taking into account the balance of effort and time spent by an entomologist, it is probably more cost-effective to search for caterpillars primarily on the outskirts than to limp along ditches. Accordingly, the illusion of absolute infertility of once-ploughed clearings could well arise due to an unconscious preference for the most passable areas for the entomologist when searching for caterpillars.

No, I have been studying all this carefully for many years and I go up and down all the sites. I repeat, I am a biologist by training. The approach to research is quite serious. You can let me know where I can view the damaged areas for Apollo tracks. I'll check it out. I would be grateful for the information.

Andrey, five kopecks in your favor... I've found Apollo caterpillars in a broken clearing. That was many years ago. The furrows were shallow and sparse. Caterpillars met between them, crawling freely over the furrows... Now there is a high forest in this clearing. I can't believe it was ever there... Now in the glades I meet furrows much deeper and more often. Reforestation has changed: a more powerful technique has appeared... Maybe they plow so deep on purpose to make the pines grow better. In deep furrows, they get more moisture from the soil. And more often they are planted, I think, to make it easier to fulfill the plan! "We have planted 10,000 pines this year..." On the same area where 5,000 were planted last year... They need to grow and plant as much as possible-the states depend on it, the salary. So they plow, as if preparing the trenches for war. You may have seen the low and sparse furrows from old techniques and old approaches. However, I would like to see them and look for Apollo tracks in your place.

Yura, five kopecks to the general fund. I took a walk yesterday (without fishing) in several districts of the Moscow region. I've seen all sorts of furrows along the way, fresh ones - yes, they are as deep as the ones I see in the last pictures, but they don't have any cleaning yet; and with pine trees at least three years old, the furrows don't deserve much attention either in depth or in the looseness of the surface. Such that the pine undergrowth and sedimentation were already there, and the furrows were still impassable, I did not see now, and I do not remember at all.

I didn't even mean the old furrows from the "old techniques and past approaches", because since those approaches, the crowns have long closed on those furrows, and this is no longer the topic.

That the pregnant female starts with a flight in search of a place of laying, still not sure. I have information that volatility is acquired only by some relief of the belly. And from my thirty years of experience, I can say for sure: a female in flight, having a full or almost full supply, has never met me (and it seems that such a bug would be the easiest to catch). There were-regardless of the terrain-either mating, or females are quite mobile, i.e. already very light (because they are much less belly-like than those in mating or in girls), although they are often absolutely not flown. Here it is simply enough to attach one to the other and draw a conclusion. As for the agony of the caterpillars in the furrows, I suppose it was not about those who were released there by the experimenter, but about the real ones, which, therefore, were among the furrows after all, otherwise who was suffering there?

I still consider it unlikely that the female (especially not yet relieved, but mating for some reason among the furrows or directly in them) will take into account the terrain in terms of the depth and steepness of the furrows when laying eggs, despite the fact that I do not question your specific observations in the slightest. I can't imagine what natural relief analogues of modern reforestation furrows could have contributed to such a "historical" formation of the egg-laying program in the past. Accordingly, although it is generally preferable for the caterpillars to challenge the sin, I am not sure that they have the right to choose.

The apollo caterpillar, as I know, is a very fast adult; and the young caterpillar, if the egg has been laid far away from a plant long enough to survive to adulthood, can die a hundred times even out of the blue before it finds the scum. Therefore, I think that energy losses at the level of crawling over the furrow one and a half times in a lifetime (and then only for those who did not have enough cleaning along the row spacing) are not a tragedy for the species and almost the most plyugavy of the many factors that evolution did not have time to take into account at all, so insects do not really reproduce in nature in those proportions that are provided for by the biology of a particular organism. If you're more tired, you'll eat more later. Someone will die on the way, but natural evolution is not a bureau of good offices, the difficulties of individual individuals just harden the population and indirectly the species as a whole.

Andrey, there are several places where we were just to the west. And in the second place, from our trip, I found fresh females about a week later.

For example, if "You" refers to a team, then write it with a lowercase letter, not with an uppercase one. If this is a personal appeal, then everything is correct, but it's completely unnecessary to contact me on you, and after those sausages and beer, it's just a sin.

Judging by your comment, I apparently misidentified the point of the first picture (where you are on the right on all fours). It seemed to me that this is the corner immediately after the exit from the highway to your point, that to the right - the exit to the highway, that behind the photographer - that smelly garbage dump and that in front, in the background of the picture, the road rises along the power line with a ridge to the left. And you must have been somewhere else.

By the way, I've already forgotten if you took pictures then, but now I see that you definitely managed to capture the main thing. Can you throw me some pictures of that time on the soap? Yandex, for example, does not limit the volume right now (it just throws a large piece to the server and sends just a link), so it's better, of course, to send the originals, and not some kind of lightweight email.

I'm glad that we have new points (sorry, then you couldn't complete them with us, you would have liked the points) fresh females come with such a delay. We were already happy then, but I didn't even expect that they would go on for another week. By the way, in these new places, it was at the farthest point of our route from the car approximately to the south that the newly born male I mentioned earlier was found on a furrowed (now not very) overgrown clearing. I don't think he crawled into the furrows at the egg or pupal stage; I think either the female missed a lot when laying, or the caterpillar flew over before pupating...

Two more males (from the same brood) were found in the evening of the first day and in the morning of the second, but (don't tell Yura this) not in furrows, but on the side of a flat dirt road in the forest, along which we went from one clearing to another.

This post was edited by A. J. Elez - 05.11.2019 19: 44

Andrey, theorizing everything... And I have been testing all these nuances in practice for many years on hikes. There are high and frequent furrows - there are no Apollo tracks. Nearby-there is. Energy consumption is a serious thing, and many scientific papers cover it. And evolutionarily, the female's choice of location was formed simply: not everywhere the Apollo habitat areas are flat, there are dunes, hills and other curvature of the terrain. And the females don't lay eggs on the slopes there. On the sandy beaches. In areas of rocks and rocks, the Apollo caterpillars can also crawl very well on large slopes. Not on the sands. Verified. Let's stop theorizing, and also look at areas with high and frequent furrows for Apollo tracks. Maybe I missed something, or I don't have enough samples. Next year I will deal specifically with these issues.

This post was edited by Wild Yuri - 12.03.2022 18: 32

Dear Wild Yuri and A. Y. Elez, What exactly do you mean by deep and shallow furrows? How many meters is it deep and how many meters is it shallow?

Gentlemen, I have another question. Do apollo caterpillars feed on young animals? Just in many lit. ist. this is specified...

I wasn't asked, but .. I've never seen it, at least not in the Tambov region

Dear Wild Yuri and A. Y. Elez, What exactly do you mean by deep and shallow furrows? How many meters is it deep and how many meters is it shallow?

For me, in this context, these are more likely not geometric, but age-related characteristics. Of course, deeper than about half a meter (like a fire ditch) is not discussed at all, and even then in comparison not with the initial surface level, but with the dumps formed along the edges of the ditch. It is a very fresh ditch, glistening with sand; and the feet, when the ditch is not crossed with one step, sink into the loose dump. And then, over the next five years, the terrain is smoothed out, although of course there will not be a full alignment. When the dumps are almost smoothed out (the time may vary), and the ditch is no more than twenty centimeters deep from their level, plus the soil at the bottom and on the dumps is no longer visible under the grass, and the dumps are already quite dense and the foot practically does not fall into them, this is conventionally called a shallow ditch. By the way, it is already very easy to step over such a ditch.
P.S. I did not think that I would ever live to see the need for explanations in the spirit of Colonel Kraus von Zillergut...