A Blue-Spotted Vision

Although the temperature plummeted and rain ran off our jackets, our excitement and determination could not be dampened. Rubber boots tromped over soggy leaf litter, and hands grasped at every fallen log, flipping them over as we searched the forest. The Wild Wonders campers and I were on a mission, seeking out an animal who thrives in rainy conditions–the salamander.

Enthusiasm began to dwindle as each log we flipped yielded no amphibian friends. I began to wonder if we would be successful in our pursuit. Then, mid-flip of a log, a camper let out a yip of surprise. “Salamander!" In an instant, the other kids abandoned their own logs and dashed through the damp ferns to jockey for a closer look.

My excitement paralleled the campers. We had found a blue-spotted salamander! The little four-legged being waved their tail back and forth at us. To the campers, it seemed like the salamander was waiving hello. In reality, we were being told to back off. When feeling threatened, blue-spotted salamanders will stand their tail up and wind it back and forth in an S shape in an attempt to make themselves seem bigger and more threatening. It didn’t work to scare us off, but not wanting to cause more stress for our friend, we said goodbye and gently rolled the log back over their hiding spot.

Wild Wonders campers and their blue-spotted salamander! Photo by Heaven Walker.  

I had hoped that we'd find some kind of salamander on our rainy excursion, but seeing this particular species was a big surprise. Growing up in Iowa, I only knew of the blue-spotted salamander as being a rare, state endangered species only found in two counties. A little research soon told me that in Wisconsin they are common across most of the state. This got me thinking, why are blue-spotted salamanders endangered in Iowa, but not in Wisconsin?

Blue-spotted salamanders are forest dwellers. They are relatively secretive, taking cover under logs, leaf litter, and other forest debris to keep from being seen. Here in Wisconsin, they inhabit both hardwood and coniferous forests across the state. With roughly 46% of Wisconsin being covered in forest land, they have a wide range of potential habitat available. Comparatively, only 8% of Iowa is covered in forest habitat.

Blue-spotted salamanders also need vernal ponds for laying eggs and for their larvae to develop over several weeks. These ponds form in the spring, and are typically dried up by summer. Because the ponds dry up, they cannot support fish, and have fewer predators for salamander larvae.

Blue-spotted salamanders also like damp, sandy soil that’s easy for them to burrow into for the winter. Taking a look at forest cover and soil maps, I discovered that the two Iowa counties where blue-spotted salamanders are found have both sandy soil and a little bit of forest cover. Mystery solved!

Close up with a blue-spotted salamander. Photo by Emily Stone. 

On the other hand, there are two other Iowa counties that have the sandy soil and forest cover overlap but have no recorded populations of blue-spotted salamanders. Salamanders are sensitive to disturbances within their habitat. Habitat fragmentation can limit their access to breeding areas, cause fatalities when migrating to breeding ponds, and limit reproductive success. The siltation of vernal pools would also be detrimental to salamander populations. At a glance, the habitat may appear right, but without a closer look it is hard to be certain.

The longer I live in the Northwoods of Wisconsin, the more I find to appreciate about the diverse nature of this place. While there is some overlap in the flora and fauna of my home state and northern Wisconsin, I’m grateful for the opportunity to discover the differences between the two states, and encounter new plants and animals!

For more than 50 years, the Cable Natural History Museum has served to connect you to the Northwoods. Our Summer Calendar is open for registration! Visit our new exhibit, “Becoming the Northwoods: Akiing (A Special Place). Follow us on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and cablemuseum.org to see what we are up to.

Unexpected Hope

Rounding the bend in an old two-track road, our group gaped up at the huge greenish-gray pile of dust that towered above. With weeds growing on the sloped sides and back, and an almost vertical cliff facing us, the landform felt like a poor quality model of the magnificent Half-Dome in Yosemite National Park. Our boots made tracks in the fine sediment under our feet, and water had made tracks and grooves down the steep face of the pile.

Bill Tefft, leader of the Ely Field Naturalist group, explained to participants on the Cable Natural History Museum’s Landscape Ecology in Northern Minnesota program that this was the waste material from a long-closed operation that quarried greenstone bedrock, crushed it into material for asphalt shingles, and then made a pile the stuff that got too powdery. “It extends all the way down to the railroad tracks,” Bill told me as we peered over a steep, forested bank. Green Mountain wasn’t just the cliff, it was the entire area.

"Green Mountain" near Ely, MN

We followed the old two-track as it curved down around the side of the pile through thick forest. The group stopped and gawked in awe at the shore of a glimmering lake surrounded by artfully rugged greenstone cliffs. Calm water reflected the lovely patchwork of a mature forest. A few cattails took advantage of the shallow water where the gentle slope of this old road disappeared into the lake.

Participants on the Cable Natural History Museum’s Landscape Ecology in Northern Minnesota program gaze at the beautiful lake that has formed in an old greenstone quarry. Photo by Emily Stone.

According to Bill, the quarry operation had to stop about a hundred years ago when they unearthed a spring and water poured into the hole. Rumor has it that some of the mining equipment is still at the bottom. But why were we here on a natural history field trip?

Tom Fitz, geologist extraordinaire, explained that this greenstone bedrock represents a time in Earth’s history about 2.79 billion years ago when lava erupted from the seafloor in a world that was almost entirely ocean. Subsequent action by plate tectonics buried the hardened lava. Heat, pressure, and time transformed some of the components into greenish minerals, and it became a rock called greenstone that’s common around Ely, MN. This is some of the oldest rock exposed at Earth’s surface. Unnatural as they may feel, roadcuts and quarries provide some of the best opportunities to observe this slice of history.

Tom Fitz explains the formation of the Ely Greenstone in front of "Pillow Rock," a landmark in Ely, MN. Photo by Emily Stone.

I was just about ready to round up the group and move on when someone exclaimed over a pretty white flower among the weeds. Five luminous petals, each with translucent lines arcing gracefully toward the nectar reservoir in the center, provided the backdrop for a ring of delicate eyelashes tipped with glossy yellow spheres. I could barely believe my eyes!

Bog star or marsh grass-of-Parnassus is a lovely little flower of cool, damp places.
Photo by Emily Stone.

I first met bog star, or marsh grass-of-Parnassus, during my summer in Alaska while assisting with a snowshoe hare study in the Brooks Range. This little beauty captured my imagination immediately. Their range map includes most of Europe and plenty of other places in the Northern Hemisphere, but in Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Michigan, they are harder to find. Except where they’re not! Once we started looking, more than a dozen bog stars appeared among the weeds.

I first met Bog Star on my sabbatical to Alaska in the summer of 2018, and painted a postcard of it when I returned. 

The information in the iNaturalist app, when we used it to confirm their identification, mentioned that marsh grass-of-Parnassus is an indicator of the damp, calcareous soil in fens. Calcium-rich soil isn’t common in the Northwoods, since the ancient oceans that deposited limestone were mostly farther south. “Could there be something in the pulverized greenstone of the green mountain that would result in calcareous runoff?” I asked Tom. “Yes,” he answered. In fact, we’d just seen veins of the mineral calcite (calcium carbonate, the same mineral that’s in limestone) in a chunk of greenstone earlier that morning.

Bill Tefft shows us a giant drill core of greenstone. It was removed to provide air flow into an iron mine. Tom spotted calcite veins in the core. Photo by Emily Stone. 

After taking a zillion photos of these beautiful flowers, I stood to stretch my back and gaze out over the quarry lake again. How odd, I thought, that this rare friend would be growing in place so impacted by humans. And yet, sorting through old memories from Alaska, I realized that I’d found that first bog star in the gravel beneath the Trans-Alaska Pipeline that carries oil from Prudhoe Bay.

Can you spot the silver snake of the pipeline in the middle of the Brooks Range, Alaska?
Photo by Emily Stone.

For a moment, my delight in finding this flower diminished. Wouldn’t it be better to find them in a pristine wetland, untouched by the industrialized footprint of humans? But what part of the Earth is truly untouched? Not only have Indigenous peoples been living in relationship with the Northwoods ecosystem since the glaciers retreated, the impacts of modern humans include dropping mercury, microplastics, and DEET into even the most remote lakes, and changing the patterns of temperature and rainfall over wilderness and cities alike.

And yet wild nature, beautiful nature, survives. That doesn’t give us license to pollute and destroy without restraint. Instead, it gives me hope that if we are careful in how we use the Earth’s natural resources—Natural Gifts, in the words of Robin Wall Kimmerer—the ecosystems who sustain us can heal. With this thought, it was as if the Sun had emerged from a cloud, and the little white bog stars shone brightly again.

Emily’s award-winning second book, Natural Connections: Dreaming of an Elfin Skimmer, is available to purchase at www.cablemuseum.org/books and at your local independent bookstore, too. Natural Connections 3 will be published in November 2025!

For more than 50 years, the Cable Natural History Museum has served to connect you to the Northwoods. Our Fall Calendar is open for registration! Visit our new exhibit, “Becoming the Northwoods: Akiing (A Special Place). Follow us on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and cablemuseum.org to see what we are up to.

Further Observations of Forked Fungus Beetles

Katherine Woolley is about to start her junior year as an environmental education major at Western Colorado University. This summer, as a Summer Naturalist Intern at the Museum, she taught our Junior Naturalist programs and showed a real talent for finding and appreciating the oddest parts of nature.

I was dragging my feet on a sunny afternoon after a long day of sitting in front of my computer lesson planning and preparing supplies for my upcoming Junior Naturalist program I co-run with my fellow intern. I didn't really feel like going on a hike, but the urge to go see what my forked fungus beetles were up to ended up outweighing my desire to sit on the couch and never leave. Since my first sighting of them this summer, I've found plenty more shelf mushrooms that house beetles. Thanks to their stationary lifestyle, I have been able to get to know each pair quite well and identify their home polypore easily. Today, I was on my way to see my favorite male and his mate.

I spotted the male first. He was sitting on the highest point of the mushroom shelf like he was the king of the hill. Then I spotted his mate, who to my surprise, looked like she was sitting up. I knelt down and cocked my head to the side to get a better look. For beetles who usually crawl on all six legs, this was an unusual position. Was she laying eggs? I couldn't be quite sure.

I searched carefully for egg capsules in the spot where I first saw this beetle. Sure enough, there was a little line of eggs! Female forked fungus beetles lay 8 to 12 eggs on the surface of their polypore or just below the surface. Eggs are laid one at a time and then covered by a sticky black material created by the female. This material is placed to the side of each egg when it is first produced and then is spread over the egg using little hairs that grow on the underside of the female's abdomen.

Female Forked Fungus Beetle using her Ovipositor to lay eggs. 

Photo by Katheine Woolley

Focusing my attention back on the female’s current location, I witnessed more of the egg laying process. By this time the beetle was up higher on the fungus and I was able to see her ovipositor at work. Her ovipositor was small, black and cone-shaped with the narrower part toward the bottom. What a treat to see! Then I got just a little too close to her and she retracted her ovipositor back into her abdomen.

I was so enraptured with watching the egg laying that I almost missed the process that occurs before eggs can even be laid. On the fungus shelf to my right, I saw another female with a male directly on top of her. In an instant I realized what was happening and my face grew red. After the initial shock of interrupting an intimate moment between fungus beetles, I started to giggle.

Like many other insects, the copulation process begins when the male climbs onto the back of the female. In the case of forked fungus beetles, the male climbs on so he is facing the opposite direction of the female. Then the male will use his legs to hold onto the female's wing coverings that are called elytra. Forked fungus beetles have proven to have phenomenal grip strength, and they most certainly need it. The two forked horns that adorn the males’ heads are not just for show, they are for prying other mating males off of females. If male fungus beetles want to pass on their genetic material, they have to be really good at holding on to avoid getting dislodged by a competing male.

Forked Fungus Beetle Copulation.
Photo by Katherine Woolley

After I snapped some pictures, I realized I was definitely interrupting and should probably back off. I checked on the female who was laying her eggs just a minute ago, but she was gone. I scolded myself for getting too excited about documenting what I was seeing and scaring her away during such an important moment. I whispered an apology to all the beetles who occupied both of the fungi and backed away, promising to give them some space for the next few days. As I walked home, I was so grateful I had chosen to go on a hike that day even when I really didn't want to. If I hadn't, I wouldn't have gotten to watch beetle life in the making. Yet again, I was shown that walks on the Forest Lodge Nature Trail are truly never boring.

For more than 50 years, the Cable Natural History Museum has served to connect you to the Northwoods. Our Summer Calendar is open for registration! Visit our new exhibit, “Becoming the Northwoods: Akiing (A Special Place). Follow us on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and cablemuseum.org to see what we are up to.

Finding Forked Fungus Beetles

 

Katherine Woolley is about to start her junior year as an environmental education major at Western Colorado University. This summer, as a Summer Naturalist Intern at the Museum, she taught our Junior Naturalist programs and showed a real talent for finding and appreciating the oddest parts of nature.

A walk along the Forest Lodge Nature Trail is never boring. I was reveling in this fact as I took my evening meander through the large trunks of towering trees. To my left, I spotted a shelf fungus clinging to the bark of a half-decayed paper birch stump. Creeping closer to investigate, I peered up, to the side, then the other side. Then I crouched down and took a good look at the underside of the fungus, my eyes squinting in the bright evening light. I squealed with delight. There they were! Two forked fungus beetles were nestled in the corner of their polypore home.

Despite being one of my favorite insects, this was only the second time I had ever been gifted with their presence. My first encounter with forked fungus beetles was almost two years ago but only a few miles away on a Northland College field trip to the Forest Lodge Estate on the south shore of Lake Namakagon. While there, a fellow classmate and I roamed the grounds together. We first spotted a shelf mushroom, and then when investigating further, spotted a weird brown bump. Looking closer, the bump had legs, antennae, was moving, and was not actually a bump at all, but an insect.

Female forked fungus beetles lack forked horns. Photo by Katherine Woolley.

With a gasp of awe, I called my other classmates and professor over to see this amazing creature, but not a single one of us had ever seen one before. Later I found out through the iNaturalist app that this insect was a forked fungus beetle. These beetles only live east of the Mississippi River. Until my move to Wisconsin from where I had grown up in Minnesota, I had lived west of their range. After that encounter, my friend and I spent the following summer scouring the forests to find another beetle, but to no avail. That made it even more thrilling to spot these two beetles this summer.

Male forked fungus beetles have two horns that they use to fight with other males. Photo by Katherine Woolley.

The particular mushroom where I spotted the beetles that day was filled top to bottom with a wide and intricate network of holes. While searching for beetles, I discovered that holes like the ones I saw are a great indicator that fungus beetles are present. This is because their larvae are the ones who create these holes by burrowing inside the woody polypore after they hatch from eggs that are laid on the outside of the mushroom.

Once inside the polypore, the beetle larvae go through their final two stages of metamorphosis—pupae and then fully formed beetles—rather peacefully by giving each other a wide birth. Even so, if a larva happens to stumble across a pupa who is still forming into a beetle inside the mushroom, they may eat that pupa! Pupae who survive the hungry mouths of their brothers and sisters emerge from their pupal cases a pale whitish yellow. After emergence, the beetles stay in their cases for a few days until they develop their characteristic deep woody brown and wet-bark-black colors.

Forked fungus beetles can spend the winter in either the adult or larval stage. Adults hide safely tucked into fungus, stumps, logs, and other decaying wood to wait for warmer weather. The larvae stay snug inside the polypore tunnels and then start their transformation in spring. Generations of the same beetle family will live on the same mushroom for up to nine years, moving onto a different polypore when the clutter of holes becomes unlivable.

An old polypore home abandoned by forked fungus beetles. Photo by Katherine Woolley.

After I snapped some pictures, I wondered if I kept coming back to this stump if I would see them again. When forked fungus beetles are born, they don't often go far. These beetles can fly, but they very rarely do. I took a final look at the shelf mushroom, looking for eggs. Finding none, I bid my beetle friends farewell. As I traveled farther down the trail, I stopped at every shelf mushroom with hopes to discover more fungus beetle strongholds, but there were none. I suppose their elusiveness is part of what makes seeing them such a treat. I smiled in gratitude at their stump on my way home.

For more than 50 years, the Cable Natural History Museum has served to connect you to the Northwoods. Our Summer Calendar is open for registration! Visit our new exhibit, “Becoming the Northwoods: Akiing (A Special Place). Follow us on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and cablemuseum.org to see what we are up to.