Oh my, I’ve let the time slip by. I started working on my 2023 recap in early spring of 2024. Good intentions floated happily around for many weeks until finally inspiration and intentions waned completely. Now, with 2024 almost gone, I want to jot down some memories and events of the past two years, for myself as much as for anyone else. My memory of events almost 2 years ago is scant without reference to my photos and my aphids. So, a set of stories from those follows.

2023
This was my last full year of regular employment, having decided a few years previous to retire at the end of June 2024. So, I was working on the search for my replacement and preparing my work colleagues for my departure at the same time as I worked on building the next phase of my life: gardening, landscaping, connecting with land and nature, studying my aphids, and just generally enjoying my relative youth and remaining good health to their fullest.

I sowed many plants for the garden in March and April, carting them back and forth from greenhouse to garage. They grew during the day in the warmth of the greenhouse and were protected at night from frost in the garage. Eventually everything was planted in the garden. Hope reigned.

Then, in late June a river of cold air enveloped the garden and frosted tender plants to the ground. Peppers and tomatoes melted, potatoes sank to mere stems, squashes blackened. Studying the situation, it became clear that the unmowed, mostly wild pastureland that I had started converting to trees and flowers had somehow generated this cold air. In that field numerous baby trees were also killed, and even the toughest invasive weeds like prickly lettuce and lambsquarters were reduced to slime. No other yards in the neighborhood were frosted. Something was seriously amiss. So, the next day I studied temperatures at sunrise. My weather station mounted at about 10 feet (3 meters) above the ground measured temperatures around 43 degrees F (6 C). In cleared areas in the field, such as tree circles, the temperatures at ground level were about 23 F (-5 C), while temperatures at ground level in the driveway and lawn north of the house were about 40 F. Somehow the tall grass with small openings in it was creating a frost machine of epic proportions, a habitat only these tough grasses could survive. And, the cold air that it generated then flowed outward, killing everything that was remotely frost sensitive. It seemed my only option was to mow the field, removing opportunity for pockets of deep, still, cold air, to build up that had frosted and killed my plants. I had thought I might have to mow the field eventually to manage the straw accumulation, or to manage weed population shifts, or to improve the appearance. Never had I imagined that frost would be the cause. So began a multi-year effort to mow 2 acres of former pasture to limit freezing damage to my garden and baby trees.

The garden recovered remarkably well and produced huge volumes of food. By October the freezer, curing table, storage boxes, and cupboards were full.

Along the way we had a handful of good outings to camp, hike and sit in quiet deserts and forests, and look for aphids. One of the first camps of the year was on the edge of Roubideau Canyon in May. It was a weekend of beautiful views, if marked by few exciting aphids.

Later in the year we made a camping trip to some local mountains, including a long hike up a valley to alpine meadows and avalanche chutes.

In the fall we made our annual trip to New Mexico. The destination was far south near Carlsbad. While the aphid collecting was mostly very difficult we did find success in collecting many more good specimens of an unusual Wahlgreniella aphid on a mysterious rose at Sunspot in the Lincoln National Forest. The trip provided good camping along the way, and time to reflect on the beauty of nature.

We had many notable visitors to our gardens and field during 2023. The winter is always the time of raptors – numerous hawks, falcons, owls, and eagles flying past every day.

Throughout winter and spring foxes frequent our land to hunt voles and mice. My handy trail cam captured some nice photos of our canine friends.

During the summer we had an unusual amphibian visitor – a mature bullfrog somehow wandered across the landscape to find our temporary pond.

In December another amphibious visitor: a tiger salamander was found overwintering in the compost. It was safely relocated to live out the winter under a pile of straw mulch.

Perhaps the most remarkable visit I documented was on December 24th. A cougar (a.k.a. puma, mountain lion) walked along the trail I maintain in the grass along the southern edge of our field. What a treat! While this animal is arguably dangerous, I am overjoyed with visits like this. Yes, the cat may be dangerous, but I’d far rather die of a snapped neck under the teeth and claws of a cougar than at the hands of the corrupt, profit-driven U.S. ‘health care’ industry.

Throughout the year we are blessed with amazing sunsets and sunrises. Daily reminders to stop and contemplate life and beauty.

2024
January of 2024 brought my last trip to central Washington State for the Washington-Oregon Potato Conference, a key landmark of each year of my working life, my ‘career.’ At that event I was honored by the Washington potato industry with a special award at their annual dinner event (https://youtu.be/K3GRJtoHop4?si=yb4Z8bAVgBSiu_5b). It was humbling and was made extra special by the attendance of my sons and nearly life-long friends and colleagues.

Early in 2024 our 8-year-old little brown dog Mina turned up lame, the diagnosis eventually being torn cruciate ligaments in both knees and severe arthritis already present in one. She was reduced to walking on leash and no more than about 10 minutes per day, this reduction from her extremely active, long-hiking, rock-climbing self. Some weeks of despair and sadness ensued, but eventually we found a dog physical therapist who, over the past 8 months, has helped us help Mina back to nearly full mobility. We hope she can enjoy the next few years living as actively as she wants to. We’ll see.

Late winter was again garden prep season. I sowed fewer things in pots and the greenhouse than usual, but there was still plenty. The weather was milder than 2023, requiring less carting my seedlings back forth from greenhouse to garage. One new addition this year was semi-formal cone-pit biochar production. Converting our shrub and tree trimmings and other woody debris into biochar, a wonderful soil supplement, was interesting and enjoyable. The incredibly lush garden growth during mid-summer suggested that the biochar was a benefit! 2024 was the second Year of the Flower in our gardens, with numerous annual and perennial flowers in the vegetable patches, the tree circles, and the ornamental border around the house. Flowers rock.

As usual, we had a spring camping outing in April, this time to Disappointment Valley a couple hours’ drive south-southwest of here. Alas, it was a bit disappointing in terms of aphids, but it did not shirk on providing good landscape views.

One of our first mountain camps of the year was in June to the edge of spring on Black Mesa east of home. Here I also struggled to find aphids due to the early season, but as usual I was able to find a few while enjoying the solitude of a dead-end road near the banks of snow farther up the hill.

The end of June was the end of my ‘career’ in potato research administration and paper shuffling. Gina asked me what I wanted, and I said an opera cake. She was a gem and spent a day making one for me! It was then on to the serious work of building the landscape I hope for on our property, getting stronger and wiry myself along the way. This included the beginnings of my intention to be more creative in my old age.

2024 was the Year of the Toad on our property, with numerous toads hiding in a hole all winter, followed by a strong breeding pair producing eggs in our seasonal pond. The swarm of tadpoles was too many for our little pond, but quite a few nonetheless matured to the point of hopping away into the garden. There, the larger toads seem to help very much with my squash bug and pill bug plagues.

Our best collecting trip of the year was to southern Idaho and back. Southern Idaho to see my brother and hang out with a fellow insect collecting naturalist geek. Along the way was a camp on the slopes of Mount Timpanogos near Salt Lake City, Utah. There, the aphids were everywhere, on every plant that can host aphids. It was a bonanza of collecting. It was also the first time a moose has walked through our camp!

One of my final collecting outings was a walk up Roubideau Canyon from the bottom. Here I found three species of Capitophorus living on our native Elaeagnaceae, Shepherdia argentea. These included what appeared to be the primary host form of a putative new species that spends the summer on poverty weed, Iva axillaris.

Fall brought some unusually early snow followed by a December with zero precipitation – a reminder that we live in the desert. And of course, fall brings the best season for sunsets.

2022 was our first full year living in western Colorado. With much work to do on our gardening and orchard establishment, we did not camp, hike, and collect as much as normal. We had three major aphid collecting outings, two of which were to New Mexico. A long-postponed geology conference was held in May near Grants, and the usual fall geology conference was based in Socorro in September. I tagged along for both, collecting aphids and hiking while Gina looked at rocks and hung out with friends.

A one sentence summary: What a difference 4 months can make!

May, 2022

Wildfire was on the minds of everyone in New Mexico after an incredibly dry winter and spring. I had made some good collections of sagebrush aphids and a few others in SW Colorado as we made our way to Grants with a few nights of camping. Among these aphids was the apparently undescribed species of Epameibaphis that has long very thin siphunculi and lives at medium elevations on Artemisia tridentata that seems to be Wyoming sage, Basin Big sage, or something in between. In the hills south of Naturita this species was very abundant on sagebrush that had been heavily browsed by elk.

As often happens in northwestern New Mexico, we struggled to find good camp sites among the oil fields. After hours of driving on the 24^th of May, we settled next to a tree and a cattle watering site on the edge of a fragment of public land amid the oil wells and their flaming natural gas vents. Collecting looked to be bleak (it was). But, on an evening hike with the dogs I found an entire forest floor of petrified trees. Some rested on the soil surface and looked like the tree had fallen and shattered into fragments. It was one of most exciting non-aphid finds of my life.

The next morning we visited the ancient ruins at Chaco Canyon. Although the unusually hot spring day presented challenges for our dogs waiting in the truck (dogs are not allowed in the ruins), we had some fun walks among and through these ancient buildings. It is surreal to touch those stone walls and imagine the humans who built them so many centuries before.

Moving south from there, we arrived in Grants, which would be our home base for a few days. The landscape was so dry, there having been hardly any rain since summer of 2021. Mina, Mani, and I spent 2 full days in the forests and deserts looking for aphids, observing the plants and animals, and feeling for the parched and worried plants. We found some interesting sites and a great view or two. Collecting was slow, but as ever, careful searching revealed some good samples of springtime aphids.

After the geology conference we left Grants for a final camp in the Zuni mountains. As we left town, we heard that, due to extreme drought and fire danger, all National Forests in New Mexico would close to public access the following day. We had that one last night to enjoy New Mexico, filled with fear that our favorite forest sites may burn in the coming days and weeks (thankfully, they didn’t).

Summer 2022 was one of gardening, building, and doing around our little ‘farm.’ Across the Southwest it was a wet summer, the monsoonal moisture plentiful for the mountains and plains. As September neared, I was getting excited by the prospects of collecting aphids in central New Mexico after a wet summer.

September, 2022

Leaving home on 23 September, we headed southeast to camp in southern Colorado before crossing the border to New Mexico. Aphid collecting was productive at nearly every stop and campsite along the way. We arrived in Socorro some days later, enjoying the hospitality of a friend in town. She provided a hint for aphid collecting: South Canyon at the base of the Magdalena Mountains. Go west on highway 60, she said, and turn on a little road marked with a sign saying, “Passenger cars not recommended.” It’ll be fine, she said (it was). It took some driving back and forth to find the road, nothing more than a two-track trail behind a rickety gate. Driving through a few cattle allotments and gates, I found the Forest Service boundary and a disused trailhead. Aphids were everywhere! This site is where I finally figured out how to use the plant identification app called PictureThis. The summer had been so wet that wildflowers were everywhere, and so many species were new to me. I learned, for example, what Viguiera looks like (it has a big leggy Illinoia on it). We hiked up the canyon that felt like black bear country, identified plants, and collected aphids. The most exciting find was an oddly apple-colored aphid living on Philadelphus microphyllus (a small-leaved shrub of canyons and rocky places). Once mounted, this aphid is similar to some Acyrthosiphon, especially the species I recently described called A. rockspirea (except with longer siphunculi than that species). What a fantastic collecting area!

The next day the dogs and I drove up Water Canyon road to the top of South Mountain. Once again, I was overwhelmed by aphids everywhere I looked. It was the perfect time of year to get heteroecious aphids arriving on their shrubby primary hosts and producing oviparae, and the monoecious aphids on their many hosts with wingless and winged females, oviparae, and males. Here, I got numerous specimens of the undescribed Illinoia that lives on Monardella in those mountains, and to my great satisfaction, I finally found a couple alates of the undescribed Wahlgreniella that lives on Fallugia (a.k.a. Apache plume). On the way back down the mountain we stopped and collected several times. Among these was a north-facing spur road, along which grew large Holodiscus plants (the large-leaf kind called ocean spray). I collected numerous big aphids with incredibly long antennae. I assumed they were the species I described in 2000 called Macrosiphum holodisci (they weren’t – they are yet another undescribed species that cannot be clearly placed in any genus). What a day of collecting!

There were too many good collections and sites in this trip to recount. After slide mounting season I’d made 200 slides from that one trip to New Mexico – about one third of the entire 2022. This trip renewed my enthusiasm for New Mexico and for studying the aphids of southwestern U.S.A., and a longing to be able to see the aphids of neighboring Mexico (if only). The 2023 trip will be southern New Mexico in September. May the summer be wet and the aphids abundant!

I spent a lot of 2021 away from Aphidtrek; it was a busy year, full of newness.

Pseudoepameibaphis

The first couple months of the year I spent diving into the taxonomy of Pseudoepameibaphis, one of my beloved genera of sagebrush aphids. This work followed years of intentional collecting of this genus everywhere I went, from roadside dog peeing stops to the tops of the highest mountains we hiked to. A decade of samples had finally set the stage for a thorough evaluation of what I had found and an attempt to align that with what was previously understood. I did much of the usual – sorting samples into what seemed like species (far more than we have published names), making measurements, thinking about host plant specificity and lack thereof, comparing to old literature, and so-on. I also drew. After 30 years of drawing my specimens the same way — camera lucida with pencil onto paper, tracing onto drafting film, touch-up and stippling with black ink – I switched to drawing directly onto paper starting with pencil and camera lucida, followed by black ink for outlines and shading with pencil to finish the look. It worked well and was much more enjoyable than stippling in black ink.

Roger Blackman, Macrosiphum

About the time that I was setting my Pseudoepameibaphis work aside, intending one more year of field research before preparing a publication, I was asked to submit a manuscript in honor of a colleague, Roger Blackman, marking his 80^th birthday. Having shelved Pseudoepameibaphis for a year, I decided to quickly write up one of my undescribed Macrosiphum. But which one? I chose one that I’d made a lot of progress on while living in southern Oregon: a species with unusual tarsi, living on extremely sticky plants called Silene (a.k.a. catchfly). I had recently found several new sampling sites near Lakeview, had numerous specimens of a very similar species that I wanted to cover in conjunction with it, so I figured a paper was possible by the deadline in late spring. So, a quick shift in my aphid work to another new species!

Packing up, Moving out

In March, we got the news: our long-awaited opportunity to relocate to western Colorado had finally come. Moving for a new job (Gina’s), we immediately had to act: plan a trip to look for houses, put our house on the market, finish up our projects or put them into dormancy. I quickly decided to finish my new Macrosiphum paper before moving; it would take every spare moment while making plans for our relocation – a project we would undertake alone, from packing and cleaning to loading and driving. Everything came together. Just as I finished the manuscript and sent it to colleagues for peer review, we had to start the physical work of moving. Our soon-to-be new home would be a house with three irrigated acres in a warm desert valley. It will be our new place to connect with, to nurture, to plant shrubs and trees that we hope will far outlive us. Through this process of hard physical work most days for 2 months, I learned that my middle-aged joints and muscles could still accomplish much and benefit from the physical demands. After getting moved in, we learned that we could dig 57 post holes and build more than 100 meters of post-and-pole fence. It felt good to be done, and the dogs appreciate having their own clearly defined space.

Before moving, I transplanted plum and cherry seedlings from our greenhouse into a large pot. We moved these babies to Colorado. In October, these became the first row of trees planted on our new place, the first batch of many food-producing plants we’ll have here.

The Mother Ship of North American Aphidology

My aphid studies began in 1988, landing a summer job for Gary Reed, who gave me aphids, aphid traps, and a copy of Miriam Palmer’s “Aphids of the Rocky Mountain Region,” asking me to try identifying aphids we found in eastern Oregon. At the time, this book was by far the best resource we had in all of North America. So for me, the Rocky Mountain Region has been like the mother ship of aphids throughout all my research and exploration, everything I find being somehow tied back to what my aphidology ancestors (Gillette, Hottes, Knowlton, Smith, and especially Palmer) had found in Colorado and neighboring states. I had traveled through the region a number of times over the years and had a vague sense of it – what it must have been like to collect those samples from the 1880s onward. I imagined Gillette and Palmer on collecting trips, driving rickety cars on terrible roads, carrying multiple spare tires and tools for the frequent carburetor adjustments that would have been necessary as they rolled up and down the mountains. Now, our new place is among the sampling sites in Palmer’s book – just one example is the type locality of Macrosiphum yagasogae (=M. insularis): Mesa, Colorado, which is visible from our new garden.

Hypotheses

Almost daily walks in the deserts and forests near home lead me to make hypotheses about aphid biology; I suspect that aphids of deserts and seasonally dry shrub-steppe habitats may be different from aphids of forests and other damp places. For example, what’s the interaction of aphids and the local Artemisia bigelovii? Like other sagebrushes, this plant is extremely drought tolerant. However, it seems to be specially adapted to the common pattern of seasonal drought in the Southwest: dry much of the winter and spring, with monsoonal moisture in mid-summer. This contrasts with sagebrushes in the lowlands of the Northwest, where rain falls almost exclusively during winter and sagebrush must endure a summer drought. So, A. bigelovii is not well-prepared to support aphids in spring and early summer. Does it support aphids at all? My hypothesis is that yes, it does: in the fall and very early spring. And, this is what I observed in 2021: Obtusicauda and Epameibaphis widely colonizing A. bigelovii in September and October. You might wonder, then, where the aphids go during later spring and early summer. My hypothesis is that they migrate up in elevation to colonize sagebrushes that benefit from winter snowfall and enjoy a strong spring and summer growing season. These include mountain sage, Artemisia tridentata vaseyana, low sage, Artemisia arbuscula, and silver sage, Artemisia cana. I have similar hypotheses about other desert-inhabiting aphids in this part of the world. It will be fun doing the field research to accumulate evidence and examples.

Place

Connecting to the places I live has always been important. And by “place” I mean the biology and geology all around me, whether the spiders running through my garden plots, the Geocoris big-eyed bugs hunting through the grass like tigers of the insect world, to sweeping and complex ecosystems of canyon, desert, and forest. This place, western Colorado, is my Place now, where I plan to live and study the rest of my active life. Learning a place never ends, and that’s the joy of it. Starting big with learning the landscape, then learning the occupants of the landscape and its history, to uncovering layer after layer of complexity and interactions, thinking about forces that brought it here, and where it will go in the future. Curiosity cannot be extinguished, it just delves deeper into layers of complexity, noticing detail after detail. Each day brings a sense of anticipation – what new details will be noticed for the first time today?

The webs of a Place

When I think of a place and what it means to me, it feels like a web of micro-places inhabited by a web of beings. All of these are interacting. Not all possible interactions are happening all the time. An aphid can find a plant and live there for a time before moving on. An owl lives in a draw this winter, eating the local rodents, fertilizing its home trees with pellets and manure. Ravens gather to socialize among the boulders and junipers of a shallow canyon, bringing the sounds of their voices, the whooshing of their wings, and changing the behavior of all the vertebrates in the area. The elk gather for a time on a plateau among the canyons, leaving a layer of manure marbles. Junipers reach into the web, blooming in billowing clouds of pollen, later in puddles of waxy blue berries to be washed down the arroyos, eaten by coyotes. The webs connecting all the beings and micro-places are effectively infinite and pulling them up and peering into them is the lifelong process of getting to know and connecting to Place.

2021 was a lot of work, and we brought many life changes into it. Now, the Solstice has passed, the sun is returning, I feel a simmering hiss of life all around me, waiting to vibrantly boil over when spring comes.

Pretty much everybody on the planet has had an unusual year this 2020.  For us here in Oregon’s Outback, life has been close to normal except that our pattern of paid work has changed and I no longer have a busy travel schedule. Limitations on tourist travel also affected our camping and collecting year. But overall, living on the outskirts of a tiny town have allowed us to keep up a normal habit of outdoor activities and explorations, albeit closer to home than normal.

            Collecting disruptions started early, however, because I had planned to spend a couple weeks of April in the hills near the ocean in SW Oregon.  Then lockdowns interfered and the entire trip was canceled.  Oddly, 2020 also brought a very poor year for my beloved aphids in SE Oregon.  Many species that are normally common almost everywhere I go were rare or impossible to find this year.  In fact, sagebrush produced almost no aphids this year until September. Instead, sagebrush was beset by psyllids, leafhoppers, and mirids. I’ve seen this shift away from aphid domination of sagebrush before. We need another graduate student to figure out the ecology behind this phenomenon!

            Slow collecting and no work travel left me with more time to work on a major manuscript that I’d been planning for this year – the aphids of Holodiscus. This paper includes information I’ve been gathering since the early 1990s. I’ll have to try to share more details once it is published.

            Despite the roadblocks, I made some good progress on several field research efforts this year.

Apparently undescribed species of Aphis.

            In our local forests I have been pursuing a handful of Aphis species that seem to be heretofore unknown. One of them lives on various Umbelliferae from our valley floors (about 1200 m elevation) to our mountain streams and peaks above 2000 meters. It has been hard to capture photos of this species because of its very active habit.  But, 2020 gave me a good photo op.

            Another Aphis I’ve been after lives on Hackelia (Boraginaceae) at mid to high elevations. It is all black and closely resembles one of the Aphis found on Veratrum (Liliaceae) and one of the species on Valeriana. In life these black Aphis make me think of the group of species that live on Senecio and relatives, but less so when mounted on slides.

            I also had the good luck to find truly massive colonies of the undescribed Aphis species that feeds on Potentilla gracilis. The more I look at this species, with its strange body shape and long apical rostral segment, I wonder if it is related to the subgenus Zyxaphis that feeds on sagebrushes and rabbit brushes.

Important Macrosiphum finds

            Early in the season (June) I took a day off from work and collected in our nearby Fremont National Forest.  Near the end of the day I found the long-elusive fundatrix of my recently described species Macrosiphum glawatz on Potentilla gracilis. It was living on a nice green plant that was actually rooted in a disused roadway. As with several of my favorite species in this genus, the fundatrix of M. glawatz is almost indistinguishable morphologically from regular early season viviparae. On that same trip I was able to find the fundatrix of the undescribed species that lives on Lonicera cauriana.

            In early July we found a lovely camping site high up in the Ochoco National Forest, near the summit of Spanish Peak. There, I was lucky to find many good specimens of the undescribed Macrosiphum that lives on the sticky forest-inhabiting Silene that grows on certain soil types from the Cascade Mountains east and south. Most important was a presence of the fundatrix stage.

            Later in the year, in conjunction with a trip to northern Idaho to visit a good friend, I was lucky to find the bizarre purple Macrosiphum that lives on Trautvetteria. That trip also started a string of finds of the undescribed species that lives on grouse whortleberry (Vaccinium scoparium).

Pseudoepameibaphis – my second favorite genus (for the moment)

            Having finished one big paper this year, I am considering making my next one a thorough coverage of what is known about a sagebrush-inhabiting genus called Pseudoepameibaphis. I’ve got lots of new information, hypotheses about host-specificity, and at least two new species.  The most exciting new species is one that looks much like a little beetle – it is black and its dorsum is hard and sometimes brittle like a beetle. It seems to live almost exclusively at or near the top of mountain peaks on the category of Artemisia tridentata called mountain sage, and sometimes shares plants with a more typical pale member of Pseudoepameibaphis. On that special day in June I was able to retrace my steps from a couple years before and find this aphid living adjacent to a particular burned and fallen tree on Winter Rim. Many other plants in the area sampled, and only on this plant did this aphid species live.  Later in the season I found it on a few plants along a high elevation stream in the Warner Mountains.

A new tent!

            I could list a few more exciting finds from 2020, but instead, I’ll finish with the big news of our new bigger tent!  It’s great because even a tall stick-figure human like me can stand up in it, and it has a vestibule for shelter in wind and rain. 

            From here on in 2020 and early 2021 it will be finishing slide mounting and then doing some careful curation and species identification, sorting un-identifiable material, and of course making plans for next year’s collecting.