Today I had a choice between drab and brown, and bright and colorful. I decided to go colorful.
This little beauty is the Elegant Blister Beetle, Eupompha elegans.
It is feeding on a brittlebush flower.
Yum, a veritable banquet of pollen.
Category: Bug of the Week (Page 137 of 219)
What are those white and dark bumps on the underside of the penstemon leaves?
Those are the life stages of the of insects called whiteflies.
The adult whitefly looks somewhat like a tiny moth, but whiteflies are actually in the Family Hemiptera. They are closely related to aphids and scales. In fact the nymphs look a lot like flat scales. They are the oval lumps on the leaf surface.
The adult whiteflies lay eggs on the undersides of the leaves. (The eggs are above the adult whitefly in this photograph.) The eggs hatch into tiny nymphs with legs, called “crawlers.” The crawlers find a place to feed, insert their mouthparts into the leaf, and suck juices from the plant. Usually there will be a number of nymphs feeding together on the underside of a leaf, giving it the appearance of sandpaper.
This particular species of whitefly has brown markings on its wings. It shows up only on penstemon plants in our yard and only in the spring. By summer it is gone. Another smaller species, the silverleaf whitefly, shows up later in the summer and fall on a wider variety of plants.
Whiteflies:Â another sign spring is here!
Talk about the beauty and the beast…
This shiny green fly feeds on nectar from flowers.
The adult green bottle flies are actually visually interesting, perhaps even (dare I say it) attractive?
No one would ever call green bottle fly offspring, the fly larvae or maggots, even remotely attractive. They serve an important function, however, because they clean up dead animals and excrement. Think about what the earth might be like if decomposers and scavengers like green bottle flies weren’t around. Yuck!
If you have a really strong stomach, I mean really really strong, you can go see maggots at work. Warning:Â not for the squeamish!
This group of flies are commonly called blow flies. They belong to the family Calliphoridae.
Have you seen any flies out yet where you live?
For more information, see Roberta Gibson Writes.