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…
Tag: leafhopper
Brazilian leafhopper
This glorious little yellow leafhopper, with its brown and white spots, was all of 4mm long, and sitting on the leaf of a sunflower (you can just see the little hairs on the leaf’s surface in the photo), waving gently back and forth in the wind. This did not make it easy to get a…
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…
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…
Scaphytopius Elegans
A beautiful little leafhopper with, alas, no common name, Scaphytopius elegans can be found all over the southern US, from Californa to Texas, Florida, and North Carolina. Adults are pale reddish brown with a wide cream or yellow midline stripe, striped eyes, a pale transverse stripe with black borders crossing the “nose” and going through…
Rugosana Querci
Another no-common-name, no description on Wikipedia, nothing beyond “It’s a leafhopper”. I understand the problems involved with trying to do field research on an animal 1/4″ long, but it just seems sad that just about all I can say about this striking little insect is “It’s a leafhopper”. Bugguide.net tells me it’s probably a second…
Green Leafhopper
The common green leafhopper, Hortensia similis, hitching a ride on my yellow kayak. …and that’s about all I can find about this insect online. It’s about 5-10 mm long. It may eat citrus plants or rice seedlings. It’s a relative of the cicada, and it’s part of the subfamily Cicadellinae, or sharpshooters, which refers to…