View allAll Photos Tagged assassinbug
I enjoy finding these guys in the garden - great macro subjects -
And, in the garden, "...The beneficial qualities of assassin bugs far outweigh their negative potential, and learning to get along with these indispensable predators is in our own best interest." (aggie-horticulture.tamu.edu/galveston/beneficials/benefic...)
Gomphocarpus physocarpus is an upright, soft shrub 0.5 to 2 m tall with a fibrous rootstock. Branches arise above a small, single-stemmed trunk. The branches are pale yellowish green and hollow. The leaves are light green, opposite, and narrowly oblong to lance-shaped. Cream to white flowers in pendulous clusters are borne almost throughout the year but mainly during summer (November to April). The flowers are attractive and have a complicated structure. The petals bend strongly backwards, arching over the flower. In the center of the flower is the corona, consisting of five pouched lobes that develop from the petals. The petals are white and the corona is suffused with pink or purple.
The corona surrounds the male (stamens) and female (carpels composed of ovary, style & stigma) structures. The filaments of the stamens are fused to form a staminal column which encloses the female part. The female part consists of two free carpels, the tips of which are united and enlarged to form the style head. This is the yellowish, 5-lobed disc that can be seen at the center of the flower. The anthers are fused to the style head. The pollen grains of each anther lobe are united to form two waxy masses known as pollinia or pollen sacs. Flowers are followed by large spherical inflated fruits covered with soft spines, splitting to release many seeds, each with a tuft of long silky hairs attached at one end to make them fly. And replant.
Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden, Miami FL
Final shot in the Ambush Bug series - similar to the vertical from two days ago, but closer. And because I had pushed the macro lens in closer, depth of field was reduced, And the second bug, at the top of the frame, was no longer in focus: in macro photography the plane of focus is often only a few millimetres deep.
Therefore I adjusted my framing to crop out most of the paler bug, first in camera and then almost fully by cropping to a pano view.
For me, the most surprising revelation was that Ambush Bugs will feed in tandem - like wolves on a kill, but with less jockeying for advantage. I had always assumed they were solitary operators.
As usual, available info via the internet should be taken as a suggestion - like the speed limit in Quebec - rather than absolute truth. One website claims they are widespread throughout "Northern America and Colorado" - can you show us that on a map, please? And is Canada part of "Northern America", or are we in a different sector of the world altogether?
Geographical confusion notwithstanding, we do seem to have a lot of these little predators, and they certainly provided me with some great entertainment on two separate mornings in the blazing hot month of August. But it's time to move on. Tomorrow's insect will NOT be an Ambush Bug or Hoverfly, nor will the scene be as dramatic or littered with corpses. In fact, it will be quite pretty. Same ditch, different story.
Photographed in my favourite ditch at Rosefield, Saskatchewan (Canada). Don't use this image on websites, blogs, or other media without explicit permission ©2022 James R. Page - all rights reserved.
A life-and-death mini-drama in the yard this a.m. - a tiny (5-6 mm.) assassin bug nymph had caught an even tinier (2-3 mm.) metallic green wasp. I assume the wasp is a type of parasitoid. You can see the bug's beak, through which it feeds, piercing the wasp behind its head. (Also, if you look really close, there are several even tinier thrips on the flower.)
An assassin bug preparing to eat a cool looking fly that it had just attacked. Photographed at Lake Waterford Park in Maryland on 11/5/22.
Sirven también como controladores de plagas. Sus ninfas son muy diferentes al estado adulto pues parecen más hormigas de color rojo encendido.
This Cog-Wheel Assassin Bug has a distinctive jagged crest that is used as a dorsal defense. Its presence is commonly associated with pesticide-free and healthy ecosystems.
Orden: Hemiptera
Familia: Reduviidae
Genero: Arilus
Nombres comunes: Insecto Rueda
Nombre en ingles: Cog-Wheel Assassin Bug
Nombre científico: Arilus carinatus
Lugar de captura: Finca San Remo
Región: La Bonilla, Embalse El Peñol-Guatapé, Antioquia, Colombia
Por: Carlos Iván Restrepo Jaramillo
Some bugs around the house - this guy was big too. He is half the size of a cantaloupe leaf. So about 3.5 - 4 centimeters.
He's named the wheel bug because of that funny gear like thing on top of his back. He's part of the assassin bug group and has a wicked bite (from that long red appendage under his chin) The pain lasts a long time, so don't pick him up. But he's also a good bug as he eats the bad guys. He's about 1 and 1/2 inches long.
Today in Valley Forge.
In 2012, S. Muthu Kumar and K. Sahayaraj wrote a fascinating article on the morphology and histology of the salivary glands of Rhynocoris marginatus, a Coreid Assassin Bug, closely related to our Fuscipes (www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3469405/).
And relatively recent research has been done into the possibilties of using Assassin Bugs as an ecologically friendly way of pest control. These Bugs hunt agricultural pests such as moths and caterpillars of various kinds. They inject their prey with a venomous saliva; the article just quoted seeks to clarify the workings of the salivary glands of this relatively small Bug.
No, Sony didn't take this photo in an agricultural area, but the workings in the wild would be much the same. Here's Rhynocoris fuscipes making off with a caterpillar of a Mint Leaf Moth, Pyrausta panopealis (I'm not entirely sure of the specific name because of our Moth's Green Eyes which in Panopealis are taken to be black).
This little drama of life-and-death and a variety of diets - carnivorous and nectarine - took place on a single Mint Plant at the bottom of the almost sheer rocks of Tanjung Rumbeh.
Thanks to Dianne for clues to the correct ID of this bug.
Apiomerus ochropterus. Taken in La Ceja, Colombia.
Assassin bug, (family Reduviidae), any of about 7,000 species of insects in the true bug order, Heteroptera (Hemiptera), that are characterized by a thin necklike structure connecting the narrow head to the body.
They range in size from 5 to 40 mm (0.2 to 1.6 inches). An assassin bug uses its short three-segmented beak to pierce its prey and then suck the body fluids from its victims.
The genus Apiomerus, which contains species known commonly as bee assassins or bee killers, is among the largest genera in family Reduviidae. Species of Apiomerus frequent flowering plants, where they coat their legs with sticky plant resins and wait for their prey. The sticky resins allow the assassins to readily capture other insects, particularly bees.
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Sirven también como controladores de plagas. Sus ninfas son muy diferentes al estado adulto pues parecen hormigas de color rojo encendido.
This Cog-Wheel Assassin Bug has a distinctive jagged crest that is used as a dorsal defense. Its presence is commonly associated with pesticide-free and healthy ecosystems.
Orden: Hemiptera
Familia: Reduviidae
Genero: Arilus
Nombres comunes: Insecto Rueda
Nombre en ingles: Cog-Wheel Assassin Bug
Nombre científico: Arilus carinatus
Lugar de captura: Finca San Remo
Región: La Bonilla, Embalse El Peñol-Guatapé, Antioquia, Colombia
Por: Carlos Iván Restrepo Jaramillo
Hi There!
There's really not much to say ... I don't know what kind of insects they are, but in my mind's eye, they are a little creepy looking.
Info Update: Linda Martin tipped me off that these aliens might be Ambush Bugs. She is correct, they are Ambush Bugs! They are in a subfamily of Assassinbugs called Phymatinae.
Here is some info from Bugwood Wiki:
"Life History and Habits: Ambush bugs are predators of other insects and occasionally spiders. They lie in wait on plants and hunt by ambush, capturing prey that comes within range and injecting paralyzing saliva through their piercing-sucking mouthparts. Ambush bugs may be forage among leaves but most commonly wait among flowers for passing flies, bees and wasps that visit (Figure 3). Ambush bugs can be most easily found by examining yellow flowers (e.g., goldenrod, rabbitbrush) and white flowers that bloom in mid to late summer."
The image is from my Summer 2019 Archives
Thanks for looking and commenting on this image, I do love hearing from you! Have a marvelous weekend!
©Copyright - Nancy Clark - All Rights Reserved
Zelus luridus, on the leaf of a butterfly weed in the garden. I guess those are rudimentary wings growing in. It's been lingering in the same area, and I'll keep an eye on it - maybe I can catch an assassination.
Possibly a member of one of the 7000 species of Assassin Bug on a Purple Coneflower bloom in my backyard.
New image set starting today: a dive into the insect world, as I experienced it this summer. When bird behaviour slows down following breeding season, and mammals are lying low because of the heat, insects come into their own.
First little subject: a Jagged Ambush Bug on a thistle flower. This is a true bug - most insects aren't bugs - in the order Hemiptera, a subfamily of Assassin Bugs. It has large grasping forelegs to snatch prey - often insects much larger than itself - which it then pierces with beaklike mouth parts. Here in Saskatchewan they're generally yellow or green; if they come in other colours, their camouflage is too perfect for me to find them. Even when they don't blend in perfectly, they may be able to fool insects with compound eyes - flies and bees, for example - that can mistake them for flower parts.
These bugs are very tiny, about 8-11 mm in length. Viewed through the macro lens, they look monstrous. Each summer, in late July and early August, I search my favourite ditches for them. If I find one, a slow approach with the macro lens often works - they don't seem to notice. If I'm at the bottom of a ditch, which is often the case, I'll usually hand hold, because the tripod is too unwieldy, the legs tending to get entangled in weeds. Like the bug itself, stealth works best.
The biggest photographic problem here was the breeze. Photographers from eastern Canada who visit here and like to shoot a lot of macro have told me the prairie breezes drive them crazy. It's true. You have to wait for a calm day, or hour, or moment. They do happen, but patience is required.
Photographed in my favourite ditch at Rosefield, Saskatchewan (Canada). Don't use this image on websites, blogs, or other media without explicit permission ©2023 James R. Page - all rights reserved.
Doi Suthep-Pui NP. Chiang Mai, Thailand
Order : Hemiptera
Family : Reduviidae
Species : unknown
Although I took this pic more than two years ago I have been unable to ID the bug, not even down to subfamily or genus level. It is almost certainly a Reduviid but I have been unable to find another that looks anything remotely like it, especially those unusual 'knobbly' legs.
The Reduviidae are more commonly known as Assassin Bugs and, as the name suggests, are predators of smaller invertebrates. They range in size from a few millimetres to over 3cm and this one was probably somewhere in the middle of that figure. They are designed to kill and can even inflict a painful bite on humans.
If anyone is able to shed more light on the id of the above individual I would be delighted to hear from you.
All my insect pics are single, handheld shots of live insects in wild situations.
My first encounter with this gorgeous assassin bug! And what a beauty it is!
Étang de Bellebouche - La Brenne - France
Recently I have begun a journey into macro photography. I have a ways to go before I get to base camp, but I would like to share a few images of my experiences along the way. Aside from new techniques and gear, it is a whole new world of wildlife for me - which I find exciting, and occasionally terrifying!
Here is a Spined Assassin Bug which has snared a Crab spider. I found this struggle for survival right in my backyard. The Assassin bug was about a centimeter long to put the scene into scale.
I hope you don't mind me sharing a few non-birds from time to time!
Ultra thin assassin bug (2 cm long, Reduviidae, Hemiptera) from the miombo forest of Mikembo (DR Congo, Katanga, 26 January 2018).
Live specimen. Fieldstack based on 36 images (fast method, Zerene Stacker, Dmap & Pmax). Sony A6500, FE 2.8/90 Macro G OSS; ISO-400, f/3.2, 1/200s, -0.3step, all natural light.
Gear and methods: www.flickr.com/photos/andredekesel/8086137225/