Insect Picture of the Day

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Andrew Lin sent in this picture of a moth, this time not on his oregano, but on his thyme.

What is the deal with those jaw thingies on the front of its head? Those aren’t antennae! I assume they’re extra fiddly bits that insects seem to have stuck on, but I keep looking at it and thinking that this is when we first knew the moths were starting to become carnivorous….

On the plus side, however, it is clearly drinking nectar from the flower with its proboscis. We can only assume that it is going fweeeet while doing so.

Extra thanks to Andrew for supplying me with extra pictures for the backfill.

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Oooh, pretty eyes. Andrew Lin caught a much more respectable-looking Calliopsis bee this time. He sent in this picture noting that, though it’s slightly soft-focused, the reflections of the oregano in her eye were really striking. I agree.

And so does the biology community. Are you ready for some serious name calling? Yesterday I joked about the Latin meaning of the name. If you break Calliopsis into its root parts, you end up with the roots callum, meaning “rough or hardened” (the English word “callus” is a direct transplant from Latin), and ops, meaning “power” or “riches”.

Hmm. “Rough Power Bee” sounds more like an Anime superhero than a bug. And “Hardened Riches Bee” sounds more like an investment portfolio. What gives?

It’s not actually Latin. It’s Greek.

Look again at that bee. What do you notice about it first?

Calli is Greek for “more beautiful”, and opsis is Greek for “A sight / vision / outward appearance / eyesight”. Put them together, and what do you get?

Oooh, pretty eyes.

P.S. I love the color and patterning of the oregano. Andrew sent in a bonus picture, if you’re interested. It’s gorgeous, and it has a great butt-shot of a Calliopsis if you’re into that sort of thing:

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Andrew Lin sends in this great photo of a bee from genus Calliposis, which is Latin for “drunken frat bee”. Here it can be seen doing a kegstand, facefirst into the oregano blossoms.

(Of course this is rubbish. Worker bees are all sterile females. But let’s be honest: “drunken sorority bee” is not nearly as funny. Maybe if a few more sororities lit couches on fire and threw them off the dorm roof.)

Seriously, people. This post needs to be lolbugged. Head on over to SayWhat or ROFLbot and get to work. Feel free to use the portrait image or the larger size.

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Here’s another one of those pictures where I don’t know the bug, and it’s not really a remarkable specimen, but some aspect of the photo was really neat.

Check out the larger version. Why on earth does this moth have gr’opperlike spines on its leg? The way the foot is turned forward to hold onto the ceiling is also interesting to me; I would have expected it to be turned backwards like wasp feet. Finally, it’s a bit blurry, but check out that schnoz. It’s like a party favor all coiled up and ready for New Year’s.

Wouldn’t it be awesome if moths made a fweeeet! sound every time they unfurled their proboscis?

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Platycryptus undatus! This is one of my favorite spiders. (I showed one of these last year.) In the picture last year, I mentoned that they have a very recognizable chevron pattern down their back. This female is somewhat small and her chevrons aren’t perfectly delineated, but you can sort of make them out nonetheless.

This spider has been living inside the screen of the stairwell of my house. I kept meaning to catch her and release her outside, because houses are like deserts to hunting bugs: there’s often no water, and little prey. When I cornered her to catch her, she looked right at me and said “Hey! I’m doing just fine here without your help, bozo!”

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You can sort of tell she’s saying that from this photo. See how wide her abdomen is? What you can’t really tell from this picture is that her abdomen is swollen upwards as well as side-to-side: this means that she is very pregnant, and that means that she is getting plenty of water and prey!

I left her in the window. As of this writing, that was a week ago, and she’s still up there. I kept an eye out for prey, and it turns out that in the morning light, any bugs that got into the house overnight move to the East- and  South-facing windows. The stairwell faces South, and sure enough, it’s a spider bed and breakfast!

That didn’t explain the water situation, though. She is clearly getting it from somewhere: unlike orb weavers, jumping spiders can’t get all their moisture from their prey, and have to augment their diet with fresh water. Then it hit me: that window is directly above one of the sprinkler heads on my lawn. Three times a week, I spray water on her screen for several minutes!

So there you have it. Cute, adaptable, and obviously smarter than me. That’s why I like Platycryptus undatus.

P.S. She’s about 7mm long. Big enough to qualify as a “big” spider if you’re afraid of them, but small enough to qualify as a “cute little spider” if you’re not.

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When my wife called me over to take a picture of a “really cool bug,” all I could think of was that she’s really changed since that day she yelled to me about a ladybug infestation, and how much she’s changed since then, looking at the beauty of the bug instead of the fact that it’s a bug.

So looking forward to taking a picture of some neat bug, I climbed the ladder and froze.  I remembered laughing at the fact that she called two ladybugs an infestation, and realized that sometimes even just one of something can feel like a full-blown infestation.

See, when I was a kid I saw a swarm of Japanese Beetles (Popillia japonica) completely destroy my father’s newly planted garden.  In minutes.  I just planted a new garden in my backyard, a dozen feet from where this was spotted.

Aptly called the piranha of the insect world, a swarm of Japanese Beetles can strip a peach tree of all but pits and branches in 15 minutes according to the Encyclopedia Britannica.  My tomato plants don’t stand a chance.

Thankfully, we’ve seen very few of these beetles in the area.  I find them absolutely stunning to look at, and love the “Karate Kid” crane-kick position they often adopt, but can’t forget the absolute devastation I’ve  seen them leave behind.

Their  beauty is nothing when compared to the possibility of losing my tomatoes.  I like my tomatoes.

I have to go.  I’m JFargo, and I’ve got a garden to protect.

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Andrew Lin can make even Polistes dominulus look good.

No seriously. Here’s the wallpaper to prove it.

Andrew says that oregano grows like a weed in Sacramento. I must admit, it’s a very pretty weed.

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Sing it with me! The ladybug larvae on the bus go… um… they go… um…

What do the ladybug larvae on the bus do?

Reader Michelle from the UK sent this picture in right after ladybug vs. aphid week, and I wish I’d gotten it up at the time, because Ladybugs were totally taking the “we’re cute!” title and the aphids would have LOVED to enter this photo in the “but your babies are ohmygoodness ugly” category.

The ladybugs would have simply smiled. That might be a bug only a mother could love, but guess what? Ladybug larvae eat aphids, too. RAWR! (Admittedy, it’s a very tiny RAWR.)

THAT’S what the ladybug larvae on the bus do!

The ladybug larvae on the bus make the tiniest RAWR!, the tiniest RAWR!, the tiniest RAWR!

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Sometimes the best identification you can make is “it’s a bug!”… but sometimes you can expand very slightly on this. Mahala Johnson sends in this picture of a mystery bug that I am upgrading to “it’s a cool looking bug!”

She suggests perhaps that it might be an aphid, but online research turns up no such beastie that would wear striped socks like this one.

Any takers on an ID?

Thanks, Mahala!

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Sometimes the best identification you can make is “bugs!”

This picture isn’t as sharply focused as I’d like but after I took it I realized that it does capture the feeling of the shot nicely. About ten centimeters above the top of this photo is where I took the picture of the ceiling spider just moments earlier.

These are the bugs that the ceiling spider was noshing on. The average size of the bugs in this picture is about 3mm long.