As a wildlife habitat certified by the National Wildlife Federation, the Conservancy Ecotone Trail gardens provide the four basic elements needed for wildlife to thrive: food, water, cover, and a place to raise young.

In addition to attracting butterflies and moths, the gardens attract many other organisms, including other invertebrates and vertebrates.

Additional invertebrates include: other insects, millipedes, planarians, and spiders.

Vertebrates include snakes, lizards, turtles, songbirds, birds of prey, woodpeckers, raccoons, and even squirrel monkeys.

 

 

 

_________________________________________________________

Invertebrates

Insects:

 

Far Left: Milkweed seed bugs (nymph and adult) thrive on scarlet milkweed pods.

Left: cotton strainer bugs (nymph and adult) eat wild cotton bolls.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Far left: A thorn bug holds tightly to a Bahama cassia branch. Its great camouflage as a thorn disguises it on plants like Bahama cassia and catclaw. This female is shown beside her eggs.

Left: Adults care for their young. Note the many small nymphs near the larger adults.

 

 

 

 

 

Below Left: A citrus root weevil waits to mate on a seaside goldenrod flower. Below Middle: A spotless ladybird beetle rests on a false willow leaf. Below Right: A ladybird beetle pupa looks for aphids to devoir.

 

Below: An iridescent weevil, Eurhinus magnificus, was spotted on a wild lime tree in Garden 11 on February 4, 2010. The identification of this beetle was confirmed by Paul Skeeley, Collections Manager, Florida State Collection of Arthropods, Florida Department of Agriculture-DPI, 1911 SW 34th St. P.). Box 147100, Gainesville, FL 32614-7100 on February 22nd, 2010. The sighting of this weevil in the Ecotone Trail garden may well have been the first time this beetle was spotted on the west coast of Florida. The host of Eurhinus is reported to be Cissus sp. (grape family)

 

Below: soldier beetles mate on a goldenrod flower and an unknown beetle larva eats a false willow leaf.

 

Below Left: A stinkbug nymph went for a stroll on a very "hairy" leaf. Below Right: An unknown insect laid its eggs on coco plum. Note the triangular arrangement of the eggs. Each egg is approximately 1 mm in diameter.

 

The next five photographs are of two different sickle-jawed green lacewing larva. Both were discovered in Garden 1 on a firebush plant on December 31, 2012. This species of green lacewing disguises itself with debris that includes the dead bodies of its prey. For scale, the second photograph shows the hairs on the leaf of the firebush. The pink in four of the photographs was the photographer's finger.

 

In the photograph below, scale insects (Orthezia insignis Browne) in several stages of development cover the stem of a crimson dicliptera plant. These scales typically damage the host plant and excete nutrients that promote the growth of sooty mold and attract ants. See if you can find an ant in this photograph.

 

 

 

As shown at left, bees and wasps are two pollinators that frequent the gardens.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Often, creatures visit the garden and we don't see them; but, we do see evidence of their visit. As shown in this photograph at left, something has been chewing the mahogany leaves in Garden 1. The culprit: a leaf cutter bee. This bee uses it jaws to cut several holes in each leaf. As the bee completes the cut, it hovers in place, buzzes loudly, and uses its jaws to grasp the piece of leaf with its legs. Then, it carries the cut portion away to wallpaper its burrow (nest.) An individual might return to the same plant over and over for a period of days. A leaf cutter bee is solitary; it does not live in a hive like most other bees. But, like other bees, it is an important pollinator. It collects pollen and stores it beneath its abdomen with stiff hairs. A photo of one of our leaf cutter bee visitors is shown at left.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The photograph at left shows an unknown tachinid fly resting on a leaf in Garden 14. Most tachinid fly females lay their eggs on the skin of a specific species of insect. The larvae feed on the host tissues, causing death. Hopefully the host species for this tachinid isn't one of our butterfly caterpillars.

 

 

 

 

Below left: A perfectly camouflaged roseate skimmer dragonfly warmed itself in the morning sun on a pink shrimp plant flower. In addition, other dragonfly species often rest on vegetation as shown below on dill, wild cotton, and wild lime.

 

 

 

 

Fairly common visitors to the gardens are lubber grasshoppers. This one is holding tightly to a coin vine stem.

 

 

 

An important garden habitat exists beneath the rocks that border the gardens. When the rocks are lifted, a variety of creatures are seen scurrying for shelter. Shown below (at left) is one of the many carpenter ants that colonize the sand below the rocks. At right, a carpenter ant is shown carrying a stranded pupa to safety.

 

Cockroaches and beetle grubs also live under the rocks.

_________________________________

Millipedes and Flatworms

Millipedes and terrestrial planarians also live under rocks bordering the garden.

 

_________________________________

Arachnids

 

 

Shown here, an orchard spider waits beneath its horizontal web for prey to get stuck in its web.

 

 

 

 

 

__________________________________

Vertebrates

Reptiles

 

One commonly seen reptile along the Ecotone Trail is the Cuban anole. Below, one suns itself in the garden, while another that is well-camouflaged on tree bark eats a cockroach.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Below: A black racer slithers over a dead palm frond and a ring-necked snake poses for its picture. Note: the ring-necked snake is beginning to shed its skin. The scale over its eye is translucent. Ring-necked snakes live under the rocks bordering the gardens. Another snake that lives there is the Brahminy blind snake. About the size of a large earthworm, this snake has eluded the photographer.

 

 

At left, another reptile has been occasionally spotted. In 2008, this female yellow-bellied slider turtle laid her eggs in the middle of the Ecotone Trail. The eggs were moved to a secure location in Garden 13.

 

 

 

On May 13, 2010, another female was observed laying her eggs in the Ecotone Trail. Below, photo 1 shows her preparing her nest. Photo 2 show her laying an egg. (Turtle photos below are by Roz Katz.)

_____________________________________

Birds

 

At far left, in 2008 and 2009, a female cardinal used the wild lime tree in Garden 11 to nest and raise her young.

As show at left: blue-gray gnatcatchers frequently gather to sing and snack on gnats in the mangrove trees bordering Garden 13.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Woodpeckers are often seen and heard tapping trees, looking for insects. The red bellied woodpecker (immediately right) and the piliated woodpecker (far right) are frequent Ecotone Trail visitors.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Red shouldered hawks also visit our gardens. For several years, a pair nested in the coconut palm in Garden 4.

 

 

 

 

 

 

_____________________________________

Mammals

 

 

One group of visitors, the raccoons, aren't at all uncommon. These animals visit on a regular basis, as evidenced by the scat they leave behind. They have been known to dig into the turtle nests along the Ecotone Trail and eat the eggs.

 

 

 

 

 

But other mammal visitors are quite unique.... squirrel monkeys. Native to Central and South America, this tribe of monkeys has roamed along the Gordon River since the 1950s. They are probably descendants of monkeys that escaped from captivity. They chirp to one another and jump along the tree canopy of the gardens looking for food. They are omnivores, with their primarily food being fruits and insects; but, they also eat nuts, buds, eggs and small vertebrates.

 

 

 

________________________________________________________________________________________

Links:

Index to Butterfly and Moth Visitors to the Conservancy Ecotone Trail

Plant Lists by Garden

Index To Photographs of Plants in the Gardens

Conservancy of Southwest Florida Ecotone Home Page

Conservancy of Southwest Florida Home Page.

Please report errors to Susan Snyder at ssnyder2@columbus.rr.com