Getting started! What is the biodiversity of our little neighborhood community garden?

We started this iNaturalist project to answer the question "What is the biodiversity of our little neighborhood community garden?" The seed was planted when we noticed a huge herd of Elderaphids on our elderberry, and upon closer inspection noticed there were some syrphid fly larvae feeding on the aphids! This in addition to the Central European Bicolored Ants doing the herding of the aphids. It was quite a scene. By an amazing coincidence, I had just been learning about Maria Sibylla Merian who was curious about insects and plants and made many important observations about their lives and interactions back in the 1680s, and published a book of her notes and illustrations. Here is a link to one of her books https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/item/138981#page/65/mode/1up , and if you zoom in on the lower left image, LVI, you will see a syrphid fly, its larvae eating an aphid, and one of its “cocoons” right above the fly. This is the way she described the fly’s larvae and life cycle:

“He feeds himself from the little flies which continually fly around him by keeping very quiet, but if one runs above his body, which he can reach, then he quickly throws out his trunk and thus takes this little insect; then it sucks out all the substance, and rejects its skin: finally it causes it to molt, & transforms itself into a blister or clear bladder, hence fourteen days after a Fly, as it is represented on the Rosebush. She develops with her feet for half an hour her wings twisted and entwined one inside the other, and flies away. She has a yellow head & red eyes, the upper part of her body is green, the underside yellow & black, & her feet are yellow, she walks very slowly.”

Such a wonderful story from so long ago, and Maria was such a careful observer and patient documenter of the whole life cycle! And we can see the scene play out right here in our neighborhood garden!

This lead to submitting a short article in the community garden newsletter.

To foster looking closer at the wildlife in our neighborhood, we created this project. We will try to build on this and use it in conjunction with some programing in Maggie's Garden, NYC.

Please feel free to message me about the project or ideas for developing and using it for community engagement with the natural world.

  • Jay
Posted on June 7, 2023 01:57 PM by jholmes jholmes

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