Insect Picture of the Day

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A few weeks ago, Aaron Wadley’s dog went missing. A day later, his cat vanished. The day after that, the neighbor called to ask if Aaron had seen her children—

Oh, come on, that would have been an awesome story and you know it!

This is a wolf spider. Not a tiny one like the one from last week, though; this one is at the other end of the size spectrum. With a body length of over 2.5cm, these are some of the largest spiders that aren’t tarantulas. Think of them as “heavyweight” spiders (tarantulas are “superheavyweight”). I don’t know the exact species, but a very similar-looking wolf spider we have out here is Lycosa rabida, which literally means “rabid wolf spider”.

Aaron has this to say about her:

We’ve got tons of these guys running around my neighborhood. The subdivision was built on farmland that had sat undeveloped for years, maybe that has something to do with the proliferation of these. Anyway, I’ve convinced my family that having them around is a good thing. Although one this size must be removed from the actual house, per my wife’s orders. This one’s body was approximately 1″ long. Their dark color makes them stand out quite visibly on the light-colored tile in the house.

This is a fantastic observation, because the same thing is happening out here. We have lots of L. rabida running around because my subdivision was farmland as recently as 2003.

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Jeremiah has caught the bug photography… uh… bug. Here’s a stink bug out on his lawn.

Lots of interesting bits on a stink bug. I’m always intrigued by their head shape. I keep expecting to see two tiny little eyes up at the front, and then I notice the huge bulging blobs down by his shoulders and realize that if those are his eyes, then what I thought of as the head was really just his big freaking nose.

Okay, that’s gonna give me nightmares.

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Jeremiah sent this in a couple months ago. I haven’t got a clue what it is. He has this to say about it:

“I think it’s kind of cool looking, and at the same time looks Photoshopped, but it isn’t!”

So, yeah; he doesn’t know either.

I see wings back there, and a really long dangly bit on her bu–on her posterior. (Let’s not start that again.) Ovipositor, maybe? Is this some species of wasp that overwintered inside the house? Or maybe some kind of mutant cricket?

Either way, it’s a gorgeous photo, Jeremiah. I’m tentatively filing it under wasps–no, wait.

Hmm.

Look at the antennae. They’re straight. They don’t show any fork or bend; this is more common with crickets and katydids and somewhat rare with wasps. Okay, change of plan. I’m tentatively filing it under crickets. Hopefully someone will jump right in and prove me wrong. That seems plenty likely, too; that thing doesn’t even jumping legs like a proper cricket or gr’opper. Any takers?

Thanks, Jer!

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Inspired by Jeremiah’s in-air bee shot, Andrew Lin went out to his garden and stalked this red hoverfly. It took multiple attempts on different days before he got this shot, but I think the effort was worth it. He got one from the front, but it was a bit blurry. Besides, we’re all adults here, we can look at a hoverfly’s butt without giggling.

It’s okay. I’ll wait.

Now then. Be sure to check out the large version–you can see the fly’s back feet sticking out from underneath its butt and–

It’s okay. I’ll wait.

As I was saying, you can see his hind legs sticking out.

You guys are so immature.

Thanks Andrew! Awesome shot!

P.S. Butt

P.P.S. I find the blurred green background soothing. Do you? Have a wallpaper.

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You know that Spanish phrase, “Mi casa es su casa”? Well, I never said that to Polistes dominulus, but here she is taking me up on that offer, chewing up my deck to expand her nest. In this picture, you are looking straight down the back of my deck at my lawn. I nailed up a tiny strip of 1/8″ plywood a few years ago to support, of all things, a wasp trap.

Oh, the irony.

A couple of cool things to notice about this pic (you may need the larger version to see these):

1. The spiky cleats inside her knees. Yikes!
2. She’s torn up most of a spitball from the deck already. The gray mass just visible behind her front leg is shredded wood (paper, hence the name!) that she’ll use to build up her nest.

I don’t know if this is a queen or a worker. What I do know is that there is evidence of my bug-fascinated insanity dating back to 2005, with this post by my wife: My husband is NUTS. The wasp trap mentioned in that post is the very same one I had clipped to that piece of plywood.

In the comments to that article, I posted a photograph of me handling the trap. I’ve copied it over here to insectpod for your viewing pleasure. (The maniac is the one on the right.) This photo was taken after I had captured about half the wasps I would get that day; I ended up with 32-33 wasps, at 5 of which were queens, based on the way they would clump up at night.

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I like caterpillars.

Filing this under “unidentified” for now, as I haven’t a clue what species this is, or what kind of moth or butterfly it will turn into. Anybody know what this one is?

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Sorry I couldn’t get this one any clearer. I happened to hike by a tree and noticed some odd motion in the air: a cloud of dust specks not moving, just hanging there. I leaned in closer, and one of them erupted in legs and began climbing her silk dragline.

This spider, one of maybe a dozen hanging from this tree, was 1mm long (so her entire span in this picture would be maybe 4mm). Itty itty bitty. As I photographed her, I noticed another strand of silk hanging down near her but couldn’t see the spider. And then I noticed an almost invisible speck of motion on the strand. Maybe 1mm fully outstretched at most. There was no way I was going to get a picture of her, so I didn’t even try.

I have started experimenting with CHDK. Nothing to report yet, but hopefully some interesting things are coming.

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This is one of the hundreds, if not thousands, of spiders that inhabit my back lawn. Too lazy to actually comb through the lawn for victims, she is lurking in the dog’s water bowl, looking up at the edge, waiting for prey to appear. Life imitating art, I guess¹: she is camping the water hole.

I really got lucky with this photo. The hairs standing out on her abdomen came out in focus and the flash got reflected in her eyes just right. I like how this picture really shows that her body is quite tall, lifting the eyes up high like a conning tower, so she can see clearly while she runs.

And run she does. This is a very fast spider. I don’t know the species but the eyesight and the speed are indicative of the general group of arachnids known as wolf spiders. This particular species is also quite social. Though they do not hunt in packs like wolves, they do get along quite nicely, unlike most jumping spiders which will happily eat their own species. Not these gals. There were three in the other water dish, and these two were huddled next to each other:

¹ Unless you’re one of those people who believe video games are not art. Then it’s just… life imitating… a video game, I guess.

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Tim Eisele sent me this picture a few months ago, and I’m glad it got lost in the shuffle because I wanted to talk about him today. But first, he has this to say about the bug:

This robber fly was hanging out on our mulberry bush in June. My wife
broke off the branch and brought it in the house to be photographed, and
at first I thought it had died it a lifelike pose. Then, after about a
dozen pictures, it flew off.

As usual, Tim gets amazing shots and provides good ID. What more could I ask for? I mean, besides the cool bugs on his own blog, like this water louse? Well, just because I couldn’t ask doesn’t mean he couldn’t provide. Yesterday he mentioned this article on how to hack your Canon PowerShot. It’s a tool called CHDK, the Canon Hacker Development Kit.

I’m jazzed. I played with it just enough to know that my camera does indeed support it, so with any luck, soon I should have some enhanced images to show off! I don’t know what the extent of the capabilities of the tool is yet, but I’m a programmer in my day job, and an unrepentant tinkerer in my free time, so I have some project ideas already milling in my head. I want to try some of the compound DOF stuff for sure, and I should be able to script up a mode that brackets the focus on a shot, automatically taking 3 or 5 photos at varying focus every time I push the button. …So exciting! I’ll be sure to post results as I find them.

Thanks, Tim, for the link… oh yeah, and for the awesome photo!

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Scott Roche sends us this picture, along with this commentary: “I’m almost positive that this is a Xylocopa virginica (Eastern carpenter bee). Due to its black face it’s a female, which means I could have gotten stung. In retrospect taking a half dozen pictures of it from scant inches away probably wasn’t wise. Wikipedia says they aren’t aggressive so that’s good I suppose. In any case she was busy starting a new hole to lay eggs in and so could have really cared less what I was doing. This is part of the roof to my mother-in-law’s deck. Wikipedia also says that the holes they make aren’t usually very big so hopefully it’s right about that too. I’m guessing that she was probably around 3/4’s of an inch long.”

I was about to write back to Scott that this cannot possibly be a carpenter bee, as carpenter bees are tiny–like 5-8mm tiny–where this bee is around 18mm. Wayyy too big, right?

Well, I think we’ve already dismissed my expertise here. Turns out there’s two genuses of carpenter bees in the US: Ceratina, which is latin for “so very teeny” and Xylocopa, which is latin for “big honkers”.

Thanks for the great pic, Scott!