🐛Bug Positivity🐛

Your local bug enthusiast

[sinobug]

LIMACODID SLUG CATERPILLARS (Cup Moths) from Yunnan, China Click on and scroll through images for individual IDs….. by Sinobug (itchydogimages) on Flickr. Pu'er, Yunnan, China View my other images of Limacodid Caterpillars from China in my Flickr photostream HERE…

[watermelonhaus-blog]

my take on an animal crossing moth villager

[platycryptus]

the florida bark mantis leers at the world in disgust.

she knows there’s only one good and perfect thing in this garbage fire of a planet, and it’s herself.

the rest of us? lowly scum by comparison.

[visual-infinity]

The Green Dragontail butterflies

[sugar-cook]

Best quality: his wiggles!

[bugnerd]

this has to be one of the most beautiful photos ive ever taken. (june 2017)

[l-ile]

[vladtheunfollower]

absolute madman

[maeborowski]

self portrait

[gothwasps]

(x)

Lets Learn About Bugs: Dolichovespula Maculata!

Seems like the best place to start Bug of the Day is with my absolute favourite, one that I already know a lil bit about, so researching isn’t going to take that much effort. It’s also known as the bald-faced hornet, which is short for piebald, or sometimes the white-faced hornet; I like it better by another one of its names, the blackjacket wasp!

While it isn’t a true hornet, it is a type of wasp, and has the largest colony potential of the entire dolichovespula genus, containing 400 - 700 workers. They’re omnivorous, and incredibly defensive, but like most wasps not a threat if you aren’t near their nests. Unlike most wasps & bees though, the blackjacket can, aside from just biting & stinging, spray venom from its stinger!

We aren’t entirely sure what physical methods they use to identify eachother, but they are capable of identifying between blackjackets of the same vs different nests. Worker relatedness is pretty high in their species, at 0.75, with workers being more related to their offspring than to the offspring of the queen, at 0.5, but the queen still holds a monopoly over production of drones. It’s believed that many nests will kill their queen so that they can reproduce, and though we haven’t directly observed matricide, we’ve found that in 19 nests examined in the reproductive phase, 14 were without a queen.

They can be identified by the black and white markings on their head, thorax, and abdominal segments. They have smoky wings, and big brown eyes. Of their terga (thick dorsal plates), the first 3 are often completely black. As with other dolichovespula, they have a rather large oculo-malar (between the mandible and eyes) gap. While drones can be recognized by their 13-segmented antennae, and 7-segmented abdomens, the antennae & abdomens of queens & workers is 1 segment shorter, at 12 segments & 6, respectively.

[solsarts]

Shiny bugs!

[mwashburnart-deactivated2021042]

Inktober using the prompt list from @crushillustration , each one interpreted via entomology ; L-R, starting with top left: eyeball (Polyphemus moth), emerge (cyclical cicada), cat (Cat-faces spider), spider (jumping spider), drool (Meadow spittle bug), pirate (minute pirate bug), rabbit (rabbit eared beetle), witchy (Black Witch moth), moon (Luna moth)

[celestialmacros]

Northern crab spider (Mecaphesa asperata) on goldenrod

Oct. 1, 2018

Southeastern Pennsylvania

[bjekkergauken]

Dungbeetles & dragonflies

[natureatlogans]

Day 7: Roach

Green Banana Roach!

I’m behind on my drawings again because of work :(

Even though I’m behind I’m going to finish this list no matter if it takes longer than a month or not! :)

@six-legs-and-more

[taakot]

hey yall as yr local moth enthusiast ive just got some words

this is like the original picture of something people were calling a ‘venezuelan poodle moth’ it was taken in 2009 and the guy who photographed it swears its a new species but most experts can’t get enough information from this 1 picture to back up these claims.  the photographer wasnt able to bring back a specimen so like?  its unconfirmed and so ‘venezuelan poodle moth’ isn’t really a real species or anything

A lot of other pictures of the poodle moth include this one:

which isn’t even alive?  it’s a felted doll of a bombyx mori silkmoth

or are photos/videos of bomby mori/china silkmoths (you can see how different this guy is from the original picture up above)

that being said china silkmoths are some of the loveliest animals ever.  you can rear silkworms as pets.  they’ll make a lot of beautiful silk cocoons for you.  silkmoths are super docile, cannot fly and are some of the sweetest little things i’ve ever handled.  so instead of hyping up a species which is built up as a hoax why dont we get some love for the bombyx mori!

[platycryptus]

I am in awe at the size of this ichneumon wasp (Enicospilus sp. I believe) that parasitized one of my polyphemus moth caterpillars.

doesn’t really look that big in the pictures, but if you’re familiar with how big this sort of ichneumon normally is she’s frikken huge

here’s the caterpillar, which I was rearing in a sleeve outdoors when I noticed a pulsating dark patch inside its thorax. After it pupated, cutting open its cocoon revealed two ichneumon cocoons. The smaller one hatched earlier into a similar but much smaller wasp, although both are females.

She dwarfs even Gnamptopelta obsidianator, a very large ichneumon with a cool name that I sometimes see hunting for caterpillars around forest edges. I was expecting that to be what came out of the cocoons. Instead, I got this thing I’d never seen before that looks like a giant version of the smallish ichneumons that fly around lights. Apparently Enicospilus, unlike G. obsidianator, are fully nocturnal, which would explain why I’ve never seen one.

[8-legged-cats]

Visit Original Link

[celestialmacros]

Green sweat bee  (family: Halictidae, tribe: Augochlorini) on New England aster (Symphyotrichum novae-angliae)

October 23, 2018

Southeastern Pennsylvania

[celestialmacros]

A Large Milkweed Bug molts into its adult form.  At bottom left, the same individual is surrounded by an adult and several instars.  At bottom right is another recently molted adult.  They will darken to red and black in an hour or so. 

Large Milkweed Bugs (Oncopeltus fasciatus)

Nov. 8, 2018

Southeastern Pennsylvania