Insect Picture of the Day

Hi Gang,

I’m preparing an extra-special ALL-SCARY bug month for October, and I need your help. Specifically, I need your scary bug pictures!

As usual:

• Images should be in-focus and 1280×960 or larger
• Images should be of live insects
• Send them to insectpod at shinybit com

Thanks in advance, now get clicking!

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Dragonflies are quite possibly my favorite thing about Summer. You druids can keep your solstices and equinoxes (equinoxi?), I say Summer is here when the dragonflies roar by, doing their level best to decimate the flying insect population.

Michael Bailey sends in this photo, and wants to know what kind of dragonfly this is. I am pretty sure it’s a “green dragonfly¹”, but beyond that I am at a loss. I am saving up for a dragonfly/damselfly guidebook, but if and when I buy one it will no doubt be localized to some part of North America, and Michael took this picture in Lawshall, Suffolk, UK.

Any takers on an ID?

Also, and this is gonna bug me all day, how do you pronounce Lawshall? “Laws Hall”? “Law Shall”? Wait, this is England; it’s probably “Lozzle” (which incidentally is the same pronunciation as “Lawshallfordhamcestershire”).

I love the scope of this shot. Great photo, Michael! Thank you!

¹ All of you waiting for a D&D reference to green dragons can just keep waiting.

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This spider was sunning itself by an irrigation pond near Utah Lake last week.

I have no idea on the species or genus, but you can tell a lot about this spider just by looking at it. Notice the tall head and the large eyes? This is a sight-hunting spider. Notice the large, strong legs? This spider is built for running speed. I believe this spider is a wolf spider, but that’s about like looking at a dog and saying “Ah yes, the world-famous brown dog.” Wolf spiders use their eyesight and speed to hunt prey by running it down.

These spiders don’t normally let humans get too close. Happily, the reason it was sunning itself was that it as about 3°C (38°F) outside at the time. The reason it was sunning itself was so it could kickstart its own metabolism.

Body length on this critter was about 1cm, so it’s one of the smaller wolf spiders.

My apologies, folks, the automagic updater for InsectPOD ran out of magic this morning, and where I am right now I do not have the tools to fix it. There is a post for today, but it won’t be up until this evening. If you read InsectPOD in the morning, my apologies, and I guess there will be a twofer for you tomorrow.

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Say hello to reader Earl Goodson’s first submission to InsectPOD, a fantastic photo of what I believe is Asphaera lustrans—the Shining Flea Beetle. It could also be A. abdominalis, which is found in Texas and Arizona (this photograph was taken at The Alamo), but I was unable to find a photo for comparison. Besides, just look how shiny it is.

How shiny is it? Well, if you look close, I think that’s Earl reflected in the carapace there!

Flea beetles are tiny. It’s a testament to Earl’s photography skills that this bug looks like a gigantic scarab. In fact, it’s probably only about 7mm long.

Is it just me, or does that bug look like it should be about the same size  as a C-cell battery?

Thanks, Earl, and welcome to InsectPOD!

P.S. Earl Goodson went to The Alamo. And he took pictures of bugs. WIN.

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Yesterday’s spider concludes the Halloween Spider Week. Halloween is still 3 days away, I have picked 3 really creepy insect pictures for your enjoyment this week.

Today’s picture is a ladybug larva. After the winter cold snap, Sandra Tayler called me to tell me that her side of the valley had not received snow and that they still had bugs in their yard. I grabbed my camera and came over, and we spent some time photographing insects and spiders in their yard.

I’m not really sure what the purpose of metamorphosis really is for ladybugs. The larvae are fully mobile and eat aphids just like the adults.

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I’ve been seeing a lot of gr’oppers around my yard these past few weeks, and I’m pretty sure they’re laying their eggs in (well, under) my lawn. I saw this one from my office window emerging from the lawn onto the sidewalk, and ran out to get some pictures. She’s about 6cm long.

My neighborhood is a newly constructed subdivision along the shore of Utah Lake. Our first year in the house we frequently met creatures that were still adjusting to the fact that the parcel of field my house was built on was no longer, in fact, a parcel of field. During my home’s construction, a pair of kestrels roosted in the rafters. Our first year not less than six lycosa rabida spiders entered our basement. (Sadly, they’ve pretty well adjusted and I’ve only seen one all this year–and I didn’t have my camera. I’m keeping my fingers crossed, though.)

One of the more interesting populations to be displaced was a herd of feral cats. My kitchen window looks out into a farmer’s field, and any Summer day I can see two or three cats prowling for mice.

What does this have to do with gr’oppers, you ask? Well, I notice that this fine lady has lost one of her hind legs. In fact, it is quite common to see fully-grown gr’oppers in my neighborhood missing a jumping leg or with pretty obvious bite marks on it. I can’t tell from looking, but given the size of her abdomen, I’m guessing that she hasn’t finished laying all her eggs in this picture.