The Translucent Terror of Leaves - _TNY_5646
This sawfly larvae, along with a whole bunch of its brothers and sisters, were hanging out on the leaves of some flowers - and absolutely shredding them. Most of the leaves were just reduced to the veins and not much else.
I believe the species to be Nematus melanocephalus and if you look really closely at the photo, you'll see that it is actually translucent and the white band above the yellow spots are actually inside it! It looked like someone poured a lot of grains of rice in there or something. Very cool.
I've been thinking about the weird S-shape these guys like to take up. I find various mention of it being a defensive position, but I can't for the life of me figure out what would be scary about it for a bird or other predator. Perhaps it's a way to imitate the empty veins of the leaf after the larvae have eaten them clean?
The Translucent Terror of Leaves - _TNY_5646
This sawfly larvae, along with a whole bunch of its brothers and sisters, were hanging out on the leaves of some flowers - and absolutely shredding them. Most of the leaves were just reduced to the veins and not much else.
I believe the species to be Nematus melanocephalus and if you look really closely at the photo, you'll see that it is actually translucent and the white band above the yellow spots are actually inside it! It looked like someone poured a lot of grains of rice in there or something. Very cool.
I've been thinking about the weird S-shape these guys like to take up. I find various mention of it being a defensive position, but I can't for the life of me figure out what would be scary about it for a bird or other predator. Perhaps it's a way to imitate the empty veins of the leaf after the larvae have eaten them clean?