{"id":10122,"date":"2014-05-02T00:05:19","date_gmt":"2014-05-02T04:05:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/esa.org\/esablog\/?p=10122"},"modified":"2014-05-02T00:05:19","modified_gmt":"2014-05-02T04:05:19","slug":"crocodile-tears-please-butterflies-and-bees","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/esa.org\/esablog\/2014\/05\/02\/crocodile-tears-please-butterflies-and-bees\/","title":{"rendered":"Crocodile tears please butterflies and bees"},"content":{"rendered":"

The butterfly (Dryas iulia<\/i>) and the bee (Centris<\/i> sp.) were most likely seeking scarce minerals and an extra boost of protein. On a beautiful December day in 2013, they found the precious nutrients in the tears of a spectacled caiman (Caiman crocodilus<\/i>), relaxing on the banks of the R\u00edo Puerto Viejo in northeastern Costa Rica.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/a>

A Julia butterfly (Dryas iulia) and a solitary bee (Centris sp.) sip tears from the eyes of spectacled caiman (Caiman crocodilus) on Costa Rica\u2019s Puerto Viejo River. Credit, Carlos de la Rosa.<\/em><\/p><\/div>\n

A boat carrying students, photographers, and aquatic ecologist Carlos de la Rosa was passing slowly and quietly by, and caught the moment on film. They watched and photographed in barely suppressed excitement for a quarter of an hour while the caiman basked placidly and the insects fluttered about the corners of its eyes. De la Rosa reported the encounter in a peer-reviewed letter in the May 2014 issue of Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment<\/i><\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was one of those natural history moments that you long to see up close,\u201d said de la Rosa, the director of the La Selva Biological Station for the Organization for Tropical Field Studies in San Pedro, Costa Rica. \u201cBut then the question becomes, what\u2019s going on in here? Why are these insects tapping into this resource?\u201d<\/p>\n

Though bountiful in the ocean, salt is often a rare and valuable resource on land, especially for vegetarians. It is not uncommon to see butterflies sipping mineral-laden water from mud puddles. When minerals are rare in the soil, animals sometimes gather salt and other rare minerals and proteins from sweat, tears, urine, and even blood.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/a>

A solitary bee (Centris sp) drinking the tears of a yellow-spotted river turtle (Podocnemis unifilis)<\/strong>. Olivier Dangles and J\u00e9r\u00f4me Casas (2012). The bee and the turtle: a fable from Yasun\u00ed National Park. Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment<\/em> 10: 446\u2013447. [Download PDF<\/a>]<\/p><\/div>\u00a0De la Rosa had seen butterflies and moths in the Amazon feeding on the tears of turtles and a few caimans. Tear-drinking \u201clachryphagous\u201d behavior in bees had only recently been observed by biologists. He remembered a 2012 report of a solitary bee sipping the tears of a yellow-spotted river turtle in Ecuador\u2019s Yasun\u00ed National Park. But how common is this behavior?<\/p>\n

Back at the field station, he did a little research. He was surprised to find more evidence of tear-drinking than he expected in the collective online record of wilderness enthusiasts, casual tourists, professional photographers, and scientists. He now thinks the phenomenon may not be as rare as biologists had assumed\u2014just hard to witness.<\/p>\n

\u201cI did a Google search for images and I found out that it is quite common! A lot of people have recorded butterflies, and some bees, doing this,\u201d said de la Rosa. A search of the scientific literature produced a detailed study of bees drinking human tears<\/a> in Thailand, as well as the remembered October 2012 \u201cTrails and Tribulations\u201d story about the Ecuadorian bee and the river turtle by Olivier Dangles and J\u00e9r\u00f4me Casas<\/a> in ESA\u2019s Frontiers <\/i>(pdf<\/a>).<\/p>\n

This experience reminds us that the world still has many surprises for ecologists, de la Rosa said. There so much still to be studied. De la Rosa is a specialist in the biology of non-biting midges, and a natural historian, with his eyes always open to new discoveries. Scientists at La Selva have discovered hundreds of species of aquatic insects that are still unnamed and undescribed.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/a>

A new species of dragonfly emerges.<\/strong> A species of Erythrodiplax<\/em>, it is only the second dragonfly found that lives in bromeliad plants. Credit, Carlos de la Rosa<\/em>.<\/p><\/div>\n

\u201cI have over 450 undescribed species from Costa Rica in my laboratory. If I did nothing for the rest of my life but collaborate with taxonomists and try to describe those, I would never get done,\u201d he said. De la Rosa\u2019s job as director of La Selva Biological Station brings him an unusual number of serendipitous encounters with wildlife. He lives on site in the lowland rainforest, and he never needs an alarm clock. Howler monkeys wake him every morning.<\/p>\n

\u201cI learned I have to carry a camera with me 24\/7, because you never know what you\u2019re going to find when you\u2019re walking to the office or the dining hall,\u201d he said. One day, he spied a new species of dragonfly on his way to breakfast. It had emerged from its larval form in the small pool of water caught in the cupped leaves of a bromeliad plant. He did a double-take. Dragonflies don\u2019t live on bromeliads. Or do they?<\/p>\n

\u201cThose are the kinds of things that, you know, you don\u2019t plan for them, you can\u2019t plan for them,\u201d de la Rosa said. There was only one known species of dragonfly in the world that lives in bromeliads. Now there will be two. \u201cYou just keep your eyes open and have curiosity, and when you see something that doesn\u2019t seem to fit, dig.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n

<\/strong> Carlos L de la Rosa (2014) Additional observations of lachryphagous butterflies and bees<\/strong><\/a>. Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment<\/i> 12(4): 210 [PDF<\/a>]<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

La Selva Biological Station<\/i><\/b> and its parent institution, the Organization for Tropical Studies, manage a 1,600-hecter lowland rainforest preserve connected to large conservation areas in northeastern Costa Rica. The station is nearly 60 years old, and maintains some of the longest running tropical ecology datasets. Each year, it hosts 250 to 340 researchers from over 100 institutions, and many specialized courses in biology.<\/i> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A Julia butterfly (Dryas iulia) and a solitary bee (Centris sp.) sip tears from the eyes of spectacled caiman (Caiman crocodilus) on Costa Rica\u2019s Puerto Viejo River. Credit, Carlos de la Rosa<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":36,"featured_media":10143,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[661,1662,782,1663,79,1664,1665,1653],"class_list":["post-10122","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-research","tag-bees","tag-bromeliad","tag-butterfly","tag-caiman","tag-esa-frontiers","tag-la-selva","tag-lachryphagy","tag-phytotelmata"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/esa.org\/esablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10122","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/esa.org\/esablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/esa.org\/esablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/esa.org\/esablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/36"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/esa.org\/esablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10122"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/esa.org\/esablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10122\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/esa.org\/esablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10143"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/esa.org\/esablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10122"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/esa.org\/esablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10122"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/esa.org\/esablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10122"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}