#chrysopid

[photapir]

I wouldn’t usually post a picture of a lacewing, but it was a slow bug day and this is probably one of the clearer shots I’ve ever gotten of one of these tiny guys. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chrysopidae Teh Power Lines, 26 July 2017

[photapir]

Green Lacewing on--what else?--Queen Anne’s Lace, down by the power lines, 16 August 2015.

[drhoz]

#36 - Green Lacewing Eggs

Green Lacewings, of the Chrysopid family, are predatory insects frequently attracted to lights. The ones we get most often in Australia have wonderfully brilliant red eyes. One laid some eggs on my windscreen - fortunately just out of the range of the windscreen wiper. Lacewings eggs are instantly recognisable, because she lays each one at the end of a long stalk.

This presumably protects them from any predators wandering along the branch or tree trunk she laid them on, but more importantly it protects her children from each other. Chrysopid larvae are voracious predators, as befits a relative of the ant-lion, and sibling = lunch. When they get older they develop even more ghastly habits, wearing the empty skins of their victims as a disguise.

Chrysopa sp., Austin's Ferry, Tasmania, Australia. Photo by JJ Harrison, 2008

Green Lacewings are fairly small, and would probably escape much notice at all if it hadn't for their attraction to light. They don't have the long and colourful wings of the Spoonwings, or the sheer spectacle of the amazingly butterfly-like but sadly extinct Kalligrammatids, but they still possess considerable charm, on top on their value as biological control agents.