Freshly Molted Treehopper Nymphs

January 28, 2010 | Caraça Natural Park, Minas Gerais, Brazil

There are a couple of freshly molted treehopper nymphs shown here. Just below them, you can see a shed exoskeleton. Their colors will return as their new skins harden. In the meantime, they inflate themselves so that their new skins harden larger than their previous ones.

Below is an adult that was hanging around a bit farther down the stem. That’s what they’ll eventually look like. You can see how the horn gets bigger with each molt.

Adult

This entry was posted in Featured Photos. Bookmark the permalink.

One Response to Freshly Molted Treehopper Nymphs

  1. Gorgeous photographs. These remind me of genus Platycotis.

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.