#1276-1277
#1276 - Acrophylla wuelfingi - Wülfing’s Stick-insect
Emilie Morris and a friend. I thought it might be the even larger Acrophylla titan, but this one was found in Far North Queensland, and the Titan Stick Insect has even darker wings (and anyway, A. titan is no longer Australia’s largest - Ctenomorpha gargantua discovered a few years ago is even longer).
Giant Stick Insects lay eggs that resemble plant seeds, with a fatty blob at one end. Ants collect the eggs, attracted by the fatty part, and dump the hard-shelled egg in the nest’s rubbish tip. There the eggs can incubate in safety, sometimes for up to three years, and the young - which mimic ants themselves - can return to the surface.
#1277 - Tuberolachnus salignus - Giant Willow Aphid
Spotted by Ella Tessalaar in SW Victoria. The world’s largest species of aphid, over 5mm long.
The Giant Willow Aphid was originally found in Europe, but over the last few years it’s become noteworthy as a potential pest of willows grown for bioenergy production. Most information in the scientific literature is from the last two decades, and from Europe. Earliest reports from Australasia were in December, 2013 from Auckland, New Zealand, and it’s now well-established in SW Australia too. It’s not necessarily a problem, here, because the willows are an invasive pest themselves.
No males of the species have ever been found, so it seems to rely entirely on parthenogenesis to reproduce, and kicking and horrible taste to protect itself.
In Japan, the aphid is parasitised by the braconid Aphidus salignae, and hyperparasitised by the ichneumonid Pauesia salignae.