I thought this insect was a badly mangled dragonfly at first, one that was in the process of being sucked into a spider’s lair. You’re looking down at this insect — i.e., its right side is pointed upwards, its top is pointed sideways, and its legs are wrapped around a piece of wood in a…
Author: Long Leggedy Beasties
Atlantic Bluet
Meet the Atlantic Bluet (either an immature male or a female, alas, the end of its abdomen is not quite in focus enough for my inexperienced eyeballs to tell), a narrow-winged damselfly found in the Caribbean and North America. Males are a beautiful bright blue, which may be related to the name “bluet”. This genus,…
Mexican Cactus Fly
This huge, imposing (and absolutely harmless to humans) big, black fly is the Mexican cactus fly (or Mexican flower fly), Copestylum mexicanum. It is named because the larvae feed on rotting cacti (and the adults, as you might guess from the above photo, visit flowers). This individual is about 13-15 mm long, a very big…
Chrysopodes collaris (Lacewing)
This lovely little green lacewing is Chrysopodes collaris, no common name, local to coastal Texas and southern Florida down into Central America. (This describes 90% of species found in Florida….) “The red lineations on the clypeus [above and between the mouthparts] are a highly unique trait among all Chrysopidae in our area”, according to bugguide….
Compact Carpenter Ant
This handsome large, red ant is native to Central America but has been, like so many other species, introduced to Florida and is slowly making its way into Texas. There are a lot of pages purporting to be about the compact carpenter ant, Campnotus planatus, but despite this it still suffers from Wikipedia Stub Syndrome,…
Neoclytus mucronatus
Alas, this gorgeous beetle (Latin name Neoclytus mucronatus) does not have a common name. It’s a longhorn beetle, but that really doesn’t narrow it down past the family (Cerambycidae). A bunch of its cousins have common names like “ash borer”, but this doesn’t. What this beetle needs to be called is a wasp-mimic beetle, because,…
Exasperating Platynota
There are times I wish I could be a fly on the wall at whatever entomologists’ meeting spawned an insect’s unusual name. This is one such time. I would love to hear the story behind the common name of the “exasperating platynota moth”, Platynota exasperatana. It’s the only notable name in a family full of…
Ornate Bella Moth
The most common name for this moth (Utetheisa ornatrix) seems to be the ornate bella moth, but my favorite is “rattlebox moth”. Apparently there’s a whole family of plants (Crotalaria) which produce seed pods that rattle if shaken, and this little moth loves to eat them. Crotalaria contain alkaloids which make the moths, and their…
Buren’s Pyramid Ant
Another lovely insect whose descriptions online are just stubs of articles. The “remarks” on the Dorymyrmex bureni page on bugguide mention that this ant is not considered a nuisance species as it happens not to shoot formic acid (as do some formicine ants). What a ringing recommendation. They’re brown, they like sandy areas, and they…
Cattail Mosquito
It’s hard for me to catch mosquitoes and flies with my big camera rig. Generally they don’t like being approached by the Big Black Eye and take off, at speed. I have so many photos of places where a bug just was! I caught this female cattail mosquito (Coquillettidia perturbans) on a very chilly morning…
Brown Widow Spider
This brilliantly marked spider is Lactrodectus geometricus, the brown widow spider — a smaller, less “medically significant” sister to the black widow spider, L. mactans. She is not native to Florida — originally from southern Africa or possibly South America, brown widows probably hitched a ride along with traveling humans (or plants, or other cargo)…
Dusky-Winged Hover Fly
This fantastic, big-eyed little alien — I really cannot overemphasize how funky this thing looks — is a dusky-winged hover fly, Ocyptamus fuscipennis, a harmless little syrphid fly. I tried to find something else to say about this species, but it’s another Wikipedia stub. Trying to describe “syrphid flies” as a whole gives me so…
Acorn Moth (Blastobasis sp.)
When it comes to miniature (~5mm long, in this case, or 15mm across the open wings) mottled gray and white moths, identification can be tricky. I would have to get very invasive indeed to really, positively identify this little moth — bugguide mentions that “the only sure way to identify this and most other Blastobasidae…
Warrior Beetle (Pasimachus sp.)
These huge black beetles (about 3cm long) are surprising to find. They look formidable, and will bite if pressed, but prefer to run away and hide under things. I found this one under my garbage can. This key at the entomology department of the University of Florida keys this as a Pasimachus floridanus, but bugguide.net…
Sanctanus fasciatus
A charming little mottled yellow, brown and cream leafhopper, native to the southeastern United States and Central America down into northern South America. This could be some other member of Sanctanus — another genus mostly distinguished by tiny differences in genitalia — but it very strongly resembles this individual on bugguide.net. It’s perching on a…
Larger Canna Leafroller / Brazilian Skipper
In my backyard, I have a little cluster of brilliant orange canna lilies. I was admiring them when I noticed that some of the big, flat leaves had a suspiciously chewed look, and some of the edges were rolled over. When I pulled back the rolled-over edges, I found a few of these fat little…