Isn’t it striking how the bronze-colored blow fly matches the nasturtium?
Doesn’t it look like fine jewelry?
Too bad the fly’s lifestyle doesn’t match its appearance.
Category: insects (Page 43 of 88)
Isn’t it amazing how some insects show up every year at the same time?
Each spring we have the tiny yellow thrips in our flowers,
and each year the equally tiny black-and-white minute pirate bugs (Orius tristicolor) arrive to feed on them.
If you look closely, you can see their beaks stuck into the thrips like tiny pirate swords.
This bug caught two thrips in the short time I was watching it and was hunting a third.
Go, minute pirate bug, go!
Have you ever seen a minute pirate bug? When are they active where you live?
Hey, what is that insect on the sunflower leaf?
The one amongst all those aphids.
Look at those stripy back legs!
This is a parasitic wasp, or more technically a parasitoid wasp. Parasitoid wasps lay their eggs in other insects. The wasp larvae feed and complete their life cycle inside their host.
I think this wasp is rather large to have completed its development within an aphid, don’t you? It is more likely to use something larger, such as caterpillars, as hosts.
After a bit of research I found out it is Diplazon laetatorius, a parasite of hover flies. Why is it hanging around aphids?
The larvae of hover or flower flies feed on aphids (see this previous post). So, this parasitoid of hover flies is sitting in the food of its host. Talk about sly!
Have you ever seen parasitoid wasps on plants?
For more information, see Roberta Gibson Writes.