Insect Picture of the Day

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That’s a moth. No really. Look again, I’m serious.

In other news, when Julia Faelt says “I found a weird bug” she is not kidding around.

Julia thinks this might be Sesia apiformis, but Finland has about 14 species in genus Sesia so she’s not sure. The prefix api means bee or wasp, so apiformis here translates to “looks like a hornet”. All of the moths in Family Sesiidae tend to look more like bees or wasps, and Julia says that some of them even share the behaviors of bees and wasps. From this I conclude that Sesia must be latin for “holy freaking crap nobody is gonna believe this”.

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Ambush! Can you spot the crab spider in this photo? …before it’s too late? Bill Seurer sends in this photo of a daffodil that his wife Lynn took last Spring. To point out the efficiency of the camouflage, Lynn says she didn’t know she was photographing a spider at all until she reviewed her flower pictures later.

Found it yet? You may need the larger version, or perhaps even the humongous version (wallpaper, anyone?) to see it. Here’s a hint: there is no part of a daffodil that is pink.

This photo, aside from being a beautifully-composed photo of a daffodil, is wonderful because it perfectly shows how crab spiders hunt: they perch atop the blossom of a flower and wait for a bee or fly to come by. The front pairs of legs of a crab spider are very long and very strong; they open these wide like the jaws of a trap and wait for prey.

Then they bite it in the face. What’s not to love? I respect that kind of honesty in a predator.

Fantastic photo. Thank you, Lynn!

Edit: I’m not sure what happened, but I think my browser just freaked out while editing this post and it overwrote it with a blank one. I have tried to reconstruct the post from memory.

Edit Edit: Credit given to Lynn, who took the picture.

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Today’s scenic shot comes  from Scott Roche. He took it at a local farm, and say that “there were quite a few of these bad boys flying around doing the nasty with the flowers.” You’ll want to check out the larger version to really appreciate the insect portion of the photo.

Bees come in thousands of varieties, but if you think about it, they basically come in three shapes: honeybees are small with yellow and reddish-black stripes, bumblebees are huge and kind of roundish, and then there’s bugs that aren’t actually bees, that look almost like a bee but with something amiss.

This might be the third kind. The telltale is the wings: they are in the airfoil chevron shape more commonly associated with flies, and we’ve already seen that some flies go to great lengths to look like bees. Most bumblebees I’ve observed have wings with rounded ends like this. I could be wrong, however: the legs on this critter end in the clawhooks of a bee rather than the delicate pads of a fly.

Hmm, on further research, it turns out there are plenty of bees with this wing shape. So there you have it: three kinds of bees, and Dave can’t tell ‘em apart.

Any takers on getting us a more reliable ID? I’m tagging it as a bee for now.

Thanks, Scott. As usual, your picture is beautifully composed!

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Cooler people than me read InsectPOD. Much, much cooler. Julia Fält from Finland saw Earl’s Lace Bug from yesterday and sent in this photo.

It’s also a Lace Bug. Instead of a macro lens, however, this was taken with a Scanning Electron Microscope. The picture is dated 2003, but it was her “first try with SEM” along with colleague Tarja at her university in Finland. She says that the bug is a species from genus Tingidae, “Lace Bugs”.

I don’t know what more to say about this image. It’s just amazing. Wow. Just… wow.

Thanks, Julia!

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Earl brings us a mystery bug today. He sent it to me wondering what it was. I took one look at it and said “What the heck is that?”

Yep. That’s me, the consummate professional.

It’s about 3mm long. The background is Earl’s arm, which tells us that he was walking along, camera in hand. Furthermore, we know that he was walking along with his camera already set to macro mode, or he can fiddle his camera into macro mode with one hand.

If I were to hazard a guess for classification, I would have to say that in life this bug was probably a member of Class Insecta, but now it lives on in undeath as a skeleton bug, which puts it in a completely different kingdom and phylum, Kingdom Nosferati (Undead critters) and Phylum Hydradonta¹ (Skeletal critters).

¹ Yes, I made that up. Literally, “Hydra’s Teeth”. If you’re over 35 or have really cool parents, you’ll understand.

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I’ve posted carpet beetle larvae before, and I’ve been expecting to find an adult and post it someday soon, so I was a bit surprised at my own surprise to discover that last Thursday’s bug was actually a carpet beetle. Thank you everyone for helping with the ID; Susannah had the clincher by asking if the underside looked like this. Yes, I rather fancy it does.

I love how the legs and antennae seem to retract into slots when the bug is flipped over. I also notice the beetle scaling that we’ve seen before, that weird bumpy surfacing we seen on a shell at magnification. (Click the larger version to zoom in on the bumpies.)

I mentioned that I thought the bug from Thursday was a True Bug because I thought it had a beak. Take a gander at this photo and tell me I’m wrong:

Okay, don’t tell me I’m wrong. I already get that. It’s probably a side view of some mouthpart thingy. But what? Is it a mandible, or a pedipalp, or is it just some mouthpart thingy? Whatever it is, it looks lke it could go right into the bone.

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Jeremiah insists that he is a terrible arachnophobe, yet he continues to send in great spider photos. I don’t know if you’re actually a terrible arachnophobe, Jeremiah, but it is indeed clear that you are quite bad at it. As a former expert arachnophobe, I remind you that the point of arachnophobia is to stay as far away as possible from all spiders. (As a recovering arachnophobe, however, your efforts are commendable. Keep it up!)

Jer says this spider is about 4mm long, which puts it in the same weight class and armaments classification as my beloved Steatodae, though this is not a member of that genus. The abdomen is taller than it is wide, which is a hallmark of Family Theridiidae, the cobweb spiders. Yes, that means this spider is a (distant) cousin to black widow spiders, but that doesn’t mean you should be afraid of it. Quite the opposite, in fact: this spider occupies the same ecological niche as black widows. Remember, kids: a thriving colony of harmless spiders is the best way to prevent harmful spiders from gaining a toehold.

About names: the suffix -idae is now generally used to indicate Family level in the taxa, and theridi is Greek for “small animal”. So it is that Theridiidae loosely translates to “Family of Wee Beasties”, which I think is kind of sweet. The Family is not monophyletic, which is a fancy-schmancy word that means “all evolved from a common ancestor”. A lot of the taxonomic tree was populated before we had the ability to study genetics, and so Theridiidae consists of the descendants of different ancestor spiders, who adapted to similar environments in similar ways. And so the name, albeit accidentally, fits quite nicely: what these critters have in common is that they are all wee beasties.

This spider is from Delaware, USA, and since this photo was taken last week it is is active indoors during the winter. Can anyone get us closer to a proper ID?

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So my wife called me yesterday to tell me she had captured a bug for me to photograph. I rushed home after work, hauled out the camera, and breathlessly asked, “where is it?”

She handed me a plastic cup with an envelope covering it. I looked through the side of the cup. I squinted. I lifted the envelope. I peered into the cup. I flipped the envelope over and checked the back of it. I looked back up at my wife and asked, “where is it?”

She pointed at a speck in the bottom of the glass. “Right there!”

This little critter was quite docile and content to be handled for photography. Sorry for the blurry photo, but this was the best one I got showing its true scale. Check out the larger version to see what that giant copper ridge is from.

Anyone who has an idea on an ID, please let me know. I have a couple more pics of this bug that are pretty good, and I’d like to get an ID before I run them. I’m pretty sure it’s a True Bug, Order Heteroptera¹, though, or more appropriately Suborder Prosorryncha²–one of the coming photos will show why I wasn’t willing to handle this bug with bare fingers! (Look at footnote 2 for a hint.)

¹ Literally, “different wings”. True bugs have both forewings and hindwings. This bug had a pair of membranous flying wings tucked up under its shell-wings.

² If my greek is correct, this means “big freakin’ nose”. True bugs all have a beak, usually used for stabbing or biting plants or other bugs. And yes, I have a picture coming soon of its very, very, proso-looking ryncha.

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Impromptu Crustacean Week continues with another woodlouse picture from Jeremiah. I cannot get over the beautiful mottling on this critter’s shell. The leg articulation is also awesome in this shot.

Thank you again, Jeremiah–awesome shot!

Today’s post will be late again. No excuse for it this time–I just suck.  After last time, I knew I needed to get the fixit tools on my laptop, and I didn’t. The post will be up around 7pm MDT today, and I will get my laptop kitted out.

Thank you for your patience!