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…
Tag: black
Sylvan Jumping Spider
A new species for me — this tiny dude (females are light brown) was off the marked path and I was unable to get closer, but he was at least kind enough to sit and stare at me long enough for me to get some photos. This is a sylvan jumping spider. Alas, both Colonus…
Yellow Fever Mosquito
Mosquitoes love me; I loathe mosquitoes. I don’t get a lot of photos of them, because if I venture out of my house I must be coated in an inch-thick layer of DEET to repel them. I try to maintain an indifferent, if not affectionate, attitude toward bothersome, scary, or venomous species, but — and…
Stiletto Fly
About the size of a house fly but unaccountably much longer in the abdomen, with long legs, and in color resembling a flesh fly (red eyes, black and white striped thorax, black and white striped abdomen), this is in fact a stiletto fly, Penniverpa festina. You’d think something this big would have more than a…
Blapstinus Fuscus
This petite (8mm) black beetle, Blapstinus fuscus, was late to a party somewhere on my driveway, but still paused to let me catch a photo. Ordinarily I’d refer to this by its common name, “darkling beetle”, but “darkling beetle” refers to the entire family, Tenebrionidae, and eventually this page would have 12 billion photos in…
Love Bug
If you live in the Gulf Coast, especially Florida, you’ve heard of the “love bug” (Plecia nearctica). They are small, relatively inoffensive flies, but due to their habit of locking together during reproduction (causing the joined pair to fly very erratically and slowly right around bumper-level), during their most amorous times of year they seem…
Twice-Stabbed Lady Beetle
Although the common names for this kind of tiny round beetle include “ladybird” and “ladybug”, the correct term is “lady beetle”. This is neither a bird nor a bug (“bugs” technically refers to an order of insects, of which the lady beetle is not a member). The common name (“twice-stabbed lady beetle”) actually refers to…
Anthrax Argyropygus
This half-inch black fly with half-black, half-transparent wings is a bee fly (family Bombyllidae), which, of course, mimics a bee. Some members of this family look even more like bees, with striped orange and black fuzzy abdomens; many seem to have followed this theme of black and/or silver “fur” instead. You can tell this is…
Diaprepes Root Weevil
The gloriously iridescent diaprepes root weevil (Diaprepes abbreviatus) is, of course, an invasive species (native to the Caribbean) that infests crops — citrus, to be precise — and is therefore a pest, etc., etc. (I get so tired of reading that under every insect description! It’s not the weevil’s fault that it likes all the…
Graceful Twig Ant
I’d been sitting on the above photo for a while, because the insect in it was winged; I seriously thought it was a wasp, but couldn’t find an exact match for species no matter how hard I tried. There was always something just not quite right. A couple days later, I was looking up some…
Palpada Pusilla
Another fly with no common name. Do I make a “hoverfly” page which will eventually have 6,000+ photos in it, or a separate page for each species of hoverfly? Decisions, decisions. Meet Palpada pusilla, a fly in the family Syrphidae. Syrphid flies, (or flower flies, or hoverflies), are generally beneficial pollinators as adults, eating primarily…
Bothriocera Cognita
This tiny, black and white spotted cixiid planthopper does not seem to have a common name. Bothiocera cognita is about 3-5mm long, and appears to range through the southeastern US. Other than that, it’s a nondescript little planthopper, without even a Wikipedia entry. Planthoppers, in general, live on, and eat plants, eating the roots as…
Episemasia cervinaria caterpillar
Ordinarily I prefer using the common name as the title for the post, but this caterpillar, and the moth it will become, has no common name, and unfortunately “Geometrid Moth Caterpillar” does not narrow it down far enough. Its scientific name is Episemasia cervinaria. For those who follow Hodge nomenclature, this is Hodge #6714. When…
Blue-Winged Grasshopper
This photo was taken in Costa Maya in 2019. (I’m walking around visiting ancient ruins — Kohunlich, for the curious — and taking photos of insects. I know, I have problems.) These little red-and-black insects are juvenile (probably about second instar) blue-winged grasshopper nymphs (Tropidacris collaris) clustering together. As adults, they’ll be huge — up…
Southeastern Five-Lined Skink
The southeastern five-lined skink lives, as one might expect, all over the southeastern United States. It looks a great deal like the American five-lined skink, Plestiodon fasciatus, but based on geographic range (this individual was found in central Florida) this is more likely the southeastern than the American five-lined skink. The scientific name “inexpectatus“, which…