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Blog Archives
White-spotted Leafhopper
January 26, 2010 | Caraça Natural Park, Minas Gerais, Brazil
Posted in Featured Photos
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Pink and Yellow Flea Beetle
January 26, 2010 | Caraça Natural Park, Minas Gerais, Brazil
Now there’s some colors you don’t see on a beetle very often. Warning colors perhaps?
Posted in Featured Photos
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Treehopper with Eggs
January 26, 2010 | Caraça Natural Park, Minas Gerais, Brazil
This treehopper appears to have deposited eggs in this twig. Â I’m not sure if she’s still ovipositing or perhaps just guarding the eggs.
Posted in Featured Photos
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Crypsis Challenge #1 Reveal
July 2, 2010 | Twelvestones, Roswell, GA, USA
Did you spot the hidden critter from this earlier post? No one commented, but I’ll go ahead and reveal the answer.
There’s a hint about two thirds of the way down on the left hand side. That’s a lacewing egg on a thread. And just to the right of that is the creature itself, a trash carrying lacewing larva. I circled the two in red below.
Reveal
Still having trouble seeing it? Try this side view.
Side View
Of course, all you can really see is the debris. To see the actual critter, you have to turn it over, as I did here.
Posted in Crypsis Challenges
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Fuzzy Jewel Beetle
January 26, 2010 | Caraça Natural Park, Minas Gerais, Brazil
Quick! What is it? From this angle, you might mistake this jewel beetle for a bee.
The beetle was feeding on the purplish flowers. Purple in, purple out.
Side view
Posted in Featured Photos
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Snobbish Fulgorid
January 26, 2010 | Caraça Natural Park, Minas Gerais, Brazil
Like many fulgorids, the front of the head of this one is oddly shaped. With what looks like an upturned nose, you could call this one downright snobbish.
Closeup of head
Take a close look at the base of the antenna below the eye.
Antenna Closeup
Posted in Featured Photos
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Black Fly with White Bands on Wings
January 26, 2010 | Caraça Natural Park, Minas Gerais, Brazil
Flies are a difficult order for me so I won’t pretend to know for sure what family this one belongs to. My guess would be a bee fly.
Posted in Featured Photos
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Leaf Beetle Feeding Behavior
January 26, 2010 | Caraça Natural Park, Minas Gerais, Brazil
This leaf beetle has created an interesting little scene.
There’s the leaf damage caused by feeding. The spots appear to be changing color as they age. I assume the green one to the top right of the beetle is the freshest. The light colored ones near the top must be the oldest.
There’s also some frass spread around.
Looking at this, I wonder if the feeding behavior isn’t offering some measure of camouflage. From a distance, the beetle appears to be just another damaged spot on the leaf.
Posted in Featured Photos
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Colorful Froghopper
January 25, 2010 | Caraça Natural Park, Minas Gerais, Brazil
Another find from my first night at Caraça’s sanctuary.
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Earwig with a Clubbed Abdomen
January 25, 2010 | Caraça Natural Park, Minas Gerais, Brazil
I’ve never seen an earwig quite like this before. In fact, I’m not entirely sure it is an earwig. When I first saw it my initial impression was of a beetle, a rove beetle perhaps. As far as I know though, no beetles have those earwig like pincers.
If this species is described in the literature, I wonder if the scientific name doesn’t somehow reference the clubbed abdomen. The whole insect looks prehistoric somehow.
This wasn’t the only one I saw. I spotted another one near by. It wasn’t quite as nice looking though, with a wing stain and a missing antenna.
Posted in Featured Photos
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