Candidate for cuteoverload.com?
We were picking mulberries back in June, and found these cute little guys, who had just hatched from their egg clutch on the bottom of a mulberry leaf. When we spotted them, they were all in a little cluster next to the eggs, but started to disperse by the time I got them to the camera stand.
Bug nymphs and eggshells
The little guys were pretty tiny (only a bit over 1 mm long), so it was hard to get a good clear picture of a single individual, but here is one that is reasonably sharp:
Bug nymph
These are pretty clearly something in the Stink Bug (Pentatomidae) family. At first, I was thinking that they were harlequin bugs, Murgantia histrionica, but then I found out that this species is not normaly further north than a rough line from Pennsylvania to Colorado. That would not be us, so either they are new to the area, or these are something else entirely. Another, more likely possibility is the two-spotted stink bug, Perillus bioculatus, which is a predatory species that is found in most of the country[1].
Which all goes to show, if I really wanted to be sure what they are, I needed to raise them to a larger size so that they would start developing some distinctive adult features. Another advantage of raising them is that then I would have found out for sure what they ate.
I thought that the eggshells had an interesting feature: the tops had burst open like flowers, as if there were a star-pattern of perforated lines on the lids where they would pop open:
Bug eggshell
This suggests yet a third possibility, that they are in the genus Podisus, which have this rather distinctive type of eggshell, and also have orange-and-black hatchling nymphs. Indulging in speculation here, back on June 4 I posted a picture of two stink bugs having sex, and thought that it was possible that they were Podisus brevispinus (among other possiblities). If that is in fact what they were, the timing, location, and probable genus are right for this egg clutch to be their offspring.
The combination of the black and red nymphs and the silvery, slightly iridescent empty eggshells was pretty eye-catching, the pictures really don't do them full justice. The fact that they were so obvious leads me to suspect that these taste really foul, or maybe even are actively toxic. No, I didn't taste one.
[1] An interesting point about Perillus bioculatus is that one of their favorite prey species is larvae of the colorado potato beetle, which is a very similar shade of orange.
Bug nymphs and eggshells
The little guys were pretty tiny (only a bit over 1 mm long), so it was hard to get a good clear picture of a single individual, but here is one that is reasonably sharp:
Bug nymph
These are pretty clearly something in the Stink Bug (Pentatomidae) family. At first, I was thinking that they were harlequin bugs, Murgantia histrionica, but then I found out that this species is not normaly further north than a rough line from Pennsylvania to Colorado. That would not be us, so either they are new to the area, or these are something else entirely. Another, more likely possibility is the two-spotted stink bug, Perillus bioculatus, which is a predatory species that is found in most of the country[1].
Which all goes to show, if I really wanted to be sure what they are, I needed to raise them to a larger size so that they would start developing some distinctive adult features. Another advantage of raising them is that then I would have found out for sure what they ate.
I thought that the eggshells had an interesting feature: the tops had burst open like flowers, as if there were a star-pattern of perforated lines on the lids where they would pop open:
Bug eggshell
This suggests yet a third possibility, that they are in the genus Podisus, which have this rather distinctive type of eggshell, and also have orange-and-black hatchling nymphs. Indulging in speculation here, back on June 4 I posted a picture of two stink bugs having sex, and thought that it was possible that they were Podisus brevispinus (among other possiblities). If that is in fact what they were, the timing, location, and probable genus are right for this egg clutch to be their offspring.
The combination of the black and red nymphs and the silvery, slightly iridescent empty eggshells was pretty eye-catching, the pictures really don't do them full justice. The fact that they were so obvious leads me to suspect that these taste really foul, or maybe even are actively toxic. No, I didn't taste one.
[1] An interesting point about Perillus bioculatus is that one of their favorite prey species is larvae of the colorado potato beetle, which is a very similar shade of orange.