Beetle socks? Clown shoes? What is going on with this Margined Leatherwing's little feets and their coordinating attachments?
With difficulty, it walked along the leaf margin like a dog reluctantly wearing shoes, lifting and shaking its legs in an attempt to unencumber itself from these orange globs.
For a bit, it attempted to use its mandibles to loosen them...
with limited success, before with a short flight returning to the source of its discomfort:
Beautiful, fragrant Common Milkweed flowers have a fascinating structure. Upon blooming, the petals of the flower fold downward, forming a kind of skirt below the corona, which is where all the action happens.
Each corona has five "hoods" that hold the nectar pollinators so desire—nothing tricky there. But in between those hoods are slits into which the leg of a butterfly, fly, bee, or beetle may slip. When the leg is pulled out, it may catch a structure called the corpusculum, from which dangle a pair of pollen packets called pollinia.
If an insect successfully extracts its leg, pollinia and all, its continued foraging on other milkweed flowers will hopefully (for the milkweed at least) bring the pollinia into contact with another slit. A pollinium thus delivered can slip into the "stigmatic chamber" contained inside, where it will make contact with the stigma and fertilize the flower.
This process can be dangerous for the insect: sometimes their leg may become stuck and they may lose it...or even perish if they are unable to get free. Our Margined Leatherwing, fortunately, has so far escaped that fate.
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