Our family just got back from a week in western New York enjoying the fall foliage.
Then I spotted this bug.
It looks like it has fall colors, too.
Do you know what kind it is or why it is this color?
If you choose, leave a comment with your idea.
Category: insects (Page 48 of 88)
Last week the weather was lovely and we went for a little hike. We noticed some midges hovering in a cluster over the trail and then we noticed dragonflies hunting the midges.
The air was suddenly filled with roseate skimmer dragonflies, Orthemis ferruginea.
Unfortunately the photographs just don’t show the amazing color they were. Imagine a shimmering purple to magenta.
Theses are males, based on color. The females are brown. Arizona Dragonflies has more photographs.
Roseate skimmers are found throughout North America and even into northern South America.
Have you ever seen one?
So, what was the mystery insect last week?
It is a wasp of the genus Megarhyssa. This particular specimen is a male wasp.
In case you are wondering, that is not a stinger pointing out of its body, but the wasp’s extra-long abdomen. The female wasps have an extremely long, slender ovipositor or egg-laying tube that they use to drill into wood to lay their eggs into the larvae of wood-boring insects. The wasp larvae then eat the wood-boring insect larvae.
In this video, you can see the female wasp pulling her ovipositor out of the wood after laying eggs.
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This is one of those insects that can alarming to look at, but are not harmful at all.
Have you ever seen one?
For more information, see Roberta Gibson Writes.