Here’s the latest chapter in the ever-expanding book: “I Wish I’d Taken More and Better Pictures.” This stonefly happened to land on a gravel path in front of me, looking like a small yellowish moth. I took a few out-of-focus pictures of it from the top and then got on the ground and tried to get a few side shots. At home, I was surprised by what I thought I saw… eggs on the stonefly’s back! You can enlarge the photo to look closer.
Apparently female stoneflies do sometimes carry their eggs this way before depositing them in water. And there was a stream just 10 feet from the trail.
I shared a couple of larvae last time, and here’s another one I came across recently. It’s the larva of a lacewing, which are the lovely, frilly-winged green insects that gardeners like because they’re predators of aphids, whiteflies, and small caterpillars. The larvae are predators too. You can’t see the “jaws” very well here, but they are shaped like moon slivers, and help the insect eat mites and aphids.
I found dozens of these little guys skittering on the underside of a log recently. Spoiler alert: It’s not an insect. What I thought was antennae, and what the creature uses to flail out in front of itself to check out the terrain, is its front pair of legs! This is a Linopodes genus mite. One reference to them that I found refers to the front legs as “antenniform.” At what point is a leg not a leg anymore?
Cheers!
Ticklehead 