This little gray lady beetle with black spots is the globe-marked lady beetle, Azya orbigera. It’s found in North and South America, and in Oceania, and…that’s about all we know, which is kind of a shame. The larvae are fluffy little white things that look like mealyworms.
Category: Insects
Forest Tent Caterpillar Moth
A cousin to the eastern tent caterpillar, the forest tent caterpillar (Malacosoma disstria) doesn’t actually make tents; instead, it constructs silken mats along tree trunks and branches. Like its cousin, however, it also congregates in large numbers and the mats can be just as unsightly and large as the tents. The caterpillars are harmless to…
Eastern Tent Caterpillar
I remember, as a small person, gathering these up by the dozens and keeping them in a jar for a few hours, marveling at them. Anyone who grew up in the eastern United States remembers eastern tent caterpillars, which form a huge, white silken tent in the branches of trees where they’re eating, occasionally gathering…
Dorantes Longtail
The family Hesperiidae, including the skippers, duskywings and cloudywings, is an exercise in frustration for field identification: 3500 species of “medium size, brown butterflies with spots” and varying patterns on the wing fringes. Add in the vagaries of amateur entomologist photography and, well. I originally identified this as a southern cloudywing, Thorybes bathyllus, based on…
Jikradia Olitoria
The description of this species on bugguide.net reads: “variably light brown to grayish or bluish, sometimes yellowish or brownish-yellow”, which I find covers the entire color spectrum pretty well. The females have white stripes on their wings, except when they don’t; the males are generally a uniform color, whatever color they’ve chosen. The nymphs can…
Whirlabout
This dainty little yellow skipper butterfly has one of the neatest names I’ve seen — the whirlabout. Its Latin name is Polites vibex. They live in the southeastern US coastal plains (think Texas – Florida – North Carolina), mostly in sunny, open areas. The caterpillars eat grasses, especially Bermudagrass and St. Augustine grass. “Skipper” butterflies…
Harmostes Serratus
Harmostes serratus is distinguished from other North American species in the genus by the toothed (serrated) edges of the pronotum (the bit behind the head). This little dude is in the family Rhopalidae, known as “scentless plant bugs” because, although these insects look like and are (distantly) related to stink bugs, they are not actually…
Drab Brown Wave Moth
If you squint, you can just about see the concentric lines on this moth’s wings which sort of resemble waves lapping at a sandy beach. Other “wave moths” have much more distinct waves-on-a-beach markings — it’s just my luck I found the only one that looks like cookies ‘n’ cream. The drab brown wave moth…
Waterlettuce Leafhopper
This tiny green beastie is a waterlettuce leafhopper, Draeculacephala inscripta. Just try to un-see that grumpy little face in the middle of its back — that’s actually one of the distinguishing characteristics for this species! (“Scutellum often with distinctive pattern of black dots.”) The other big feature on this guy is the handsome black scrollwork…
Black Stink Bug
This is the black stink bug, Proxys punctulatus, a relatively benign insect found over most of the southern US and down into the Carribbean. It’s about 12mm long, black, with spotted black and cream legs, with a long, pointy face, banded antennae, and a black body with a single white spot in the middle. Like…
Grass Tubeworm Moth
Another in the unexpectedly immense category of “little brown moths”, Acrolophus arcanella has some neat geometric patterns and — well, I’m sure that real entomologists don’t call it a “pompadour”, but it’s a neat little lion’s mane of fluffy scales on the back of the head and “shoulders”. The name Acrolophus actually comes from the…
Swamp Milkweed Leaf Beetle
This globular, yellow creature is the larva of a swamp milkweed leaf beetle, Labidomera clivicollis. Leaf beetles, in the family Chrysomelidae, tend to be named after the plants on which they specialize; as you may guess, the swamp milkweed leaf beetle eats the leaves of the swamp milkweed plant, Asclepias incarnata. These larvae will grow…
Mantis Fly
Okay, technically, this is a shore fly, and it’s definitely a fly, not a mantis, but what else can you call this little dude? Meet Ochthera tuberculata, one of about 13 North American species, and 40 species worldwide, of “shore flies with raptorial forelegs”. (They’re not technically “mantis flies”, because that’s an entirely separate family…
Parasitic Wasp and Gall
This is an interesting setup — this wasp is actually a parasite of a parasite. She’s walking over this tree gall, seeing if she can lay her eggs in any of the parasitic insects living inside the gall! Galls (rounded protrusions of trunk or stem) form on plants when (usually, larval) insects burrow inside. The…
Stilt-Legged Fly
Stilt-legged flies (in the family Micropezidae) make their living by pretending to be other insects — in this case, an ant. The forelegs of this stilt-legged fly (Taeniaptera trivittata) are bright white to attract attention, and the fly holds them out straight in front of it like the antennae of an ant. Other Micropezidae pretend…
Cypress Emerald Moth
The moth family Geometridae has a number of brilliant little bright green moths in it, not even all in the same genus. To make things weirder, the cypress emerald moth (Nemoria elfa) also comes in a red or brownish flavor, which appears to be seasonal to cooler weather. Adults are approximately 9-12mm across, with females…