This diminutive Muppet is, unfortunately, an exotic, invasive pest which arrived in Florida around the year 2000 and is quietly eating its way through native, ornamental, vegetable and fruit plants. The adults eat the leaves; the larvae eat the root systems. Alas! Everything cute is terrible and evil. The Sri Lankan weevil (either Myllocerus undecimpustulatus…
Author: Long Leggedy Beasties
Flesh Fly
This photo is most notable for the fly having been chilly enough (“winter” in Florida) that it held still for me to get within 3 inches and get a photograph. I cannot normally catch flies, so to speak, with my macro rig. The 108 genera, and 2500 species, of flesh flies eat carrion, dung, and…
Green Lacewing
There are 22 species of “green lacewing” in Florida, spread across a number of families, and the identification key reads like marketing material from the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation, reminding me of a quote from Carl Sagan: “Before you can identify a green lacewing, you must first invent the universe…or at least look up the definition…
Stained Glass Moth
This gorgeous little girl (males have big, unique “tufts” along their abdomens) is a stained-glass moth or assembly moth, Samea ecclesialis. These very common moths are notable for being abundant, flying all year round, and for being of “no reported economic importance” (does that phrase bother anyone else?). They range all over North and South…
Gray Wall Jumper
I glanced to my side while walking and happened to notice this minuscule little lady hanging out on the pier at Wilderness Lodge at Walt Disney World — so she might actually be a clever animatronic spider. Gray wall jumper spiders (Menemerus bivittatus) are actually human imports to Florida, but fortunately they’re one of the…
Common House Spider
My garage door looks pretty clean from a distance, but upon inspection it has a couple dozen, probably, of these little spiders keeping the local mosquito, gnat, and ant population down (thank you!) A ludicrous number of species are lumped under the name “common house spider”, but these particular individuals are comb-footed or cobweb spiders…
Cotton Stainer
This brilliant red and black insect looks a lot like a red stink bug. It is in fact a “cotton stainer”, Dysdercus suturellus. These insects used to be great pests of cotton (they were named for their habit of staining cotton an indelible yellow brown), but now, due in part to improved pest control and…
Green Tree Python
This gorgeous snake is native to New Guinea, parts of Indonesia, and Australia. As its name suggests, the green tree python (Morelia viridis, also Chondropython viridis prior to 1993) is a bright green snake which lives in trees. It hunts small mammals and reptiles. Being tree-dwelling, they have a characteristic resting pose, wherein they drape…
Timber Rattlesnake
I am quite grateful for thick exhibit glass when photographing venomous snakes; this gorgeous timber rattlesnake (Crotalus horridus) at the Central Florida Zoo and Botanical Gardens would almost certainly not have posed quite so well without it. Also known as the canebrake rattler, the timber rattler grows to be about 36-60 inches long. It is…
Southern Black Racer
The southern black racer snake (Coluber constrictor priapus) is a black snake with light markings around the mouth, chin, and throat. It reaches approximately 20-56 inches in length. This small, fast snake is found throughout Florida (except for the Everglades and Cape Canaveral). Outside of Florida, it is found throughout the eastern United States, from…
Cave Cricket
This photo was taken in 2012 during a visit to Mammoth Cave in Kentucky. Just as we were leaving, I had the misfortune to look up and find dozens of these huge, long-legged crickets crawling along the ceiling! Cave crickets (there are several species, but the one specifically living in Mammoth Cave is Hadenoecus subterraneus)…
Long-Tailed Skipper
This one was hard to identify, mostly because “black swallowtail” describes a bunch of species, and “black butterfly” describes even more. Ironically, this is a very distinctive butterfly which I happened to catch at a terrible angle: if I’d seen this butterfly from above, I would have noticed the bright blue upper side which would…
White Peacock Butterfly
The white peacock butterfly, Anartia jatrophae, is found through much of the southeastern U.S., Central and South America, and the Carribbean. They like warm, open, weedy areas near water. Males display a unique territorial behavior, staking out a territory which may be 15m or so in diameter, and defending it aggressively from other males and…
Wheel Bug
One of the largest terrestrial true bugs in North America, this bad boy (or girl) can reach up to 1.5 inches / 38mm in size (although subjectively it seems much bigger in person!). The wheel bug (Arilus cristatus) is an assassin bug, which means that big pointy bit on the front is in fact a…
Heppner’s Grass Tubeworm Moth
Trust me when I say that “little brown moth” is not a taxonomic rabbit hole you want to go down. This is Acrolophus heppneri, Heppner’s grass tubeworm moth, about 8mm long and with a whopping four whole sentences in its Wikipedia page. The weird little “cowlick” visible on its right side is apparently characteristic.
Green Lacewing Larva
I have been trying to get a picture of one of these diminutive little specks of dust for quite some time. It’s not that they’re hard to find, it’s just that it’s hard to get a photo where you can tell this is something other than a little poof of dust! This is a junkbug,…