It’s a busy time of year, so I’ll leave you with this dainty flower fly. Enjoy!
Category: insects (Page 55 of 88)
You just might mistake our bug of the week for a milkweed bug or a boxelder bug.
It is only colorful orange on the edges, though, hence the name “bordered” plant bug (family Largidae, genus Largus).
Can you see the triangle in the back that is a characteristic of a “true bug“?
This adult also has the wings on the back that are half leathery and half soft and membranous.
Bordered plant bugs are somewhat larger than either milkweed bugs or boxelder bugs.
Bordered plant bugs, as their name suggests, feed on plants like this one sharing a milkweed flower with a queen butterfly.
The youngest nymphs are bright red. The older nymphs are shiny black, sometimes with red markings. Natural History of Orange County, California has some nice photographs of adults and nymphs.
Have you ever seen a bordered plant bug?
One from the archives:
This little insect might not have ever caught my eye if it had been on a plant.
Of course, against the brown twig and soil you can really see it.
This is a flatid planthopper, Family Flatidae.
The adults and nymphs suck fluids from plants.
Planthoppers can hop, as their name implies, but often they simply shuffle to the other side of a stem when approached.
You can see the citrus flatid planthopper move in a characteristic way at the end of this short video.
The flatid planthoppers appear to have a soft white glaze, which is actually a powder of wax they produce themselves. Some scientists have suggested that the wax helps the insects escape from predators. The white wax may make the insects look moldy, so birds think they are unpalatable.
I wonder if anyone has looked into the properties of those waxes. Are flatid planthoppers easily overlooked insects with overlooked potential?
For more information, see Roberta Gibson Writes.