Insect appreciation thread - You WILL love the bugs

[bug_ensneeded9000]

WOooooooaaahhhh buggyyy!!!!

 

[Justwandering02]

me and my sis gone apeshit when we found a philipus audax, and many took photos of it

 

[WhatInTheActualFuck]

Caught some boxelder bugs In flagrante delicto:

 

[Positron]

Beetles love fungi, especially the polypore fungi that grow on rotten logs. There are half a dozen families or subfamilies of beetles being given the generic common name "X fungus beetles". Two of the most eye-catching ones are the Erotylidae "Pleasing Fungus Beetles" and Endomychidae "Handsome Fungus Beetles"

Erotylidae are round or slightly oblong, usually of good size (about 2 cm in length) and decorated with aposemic spots and waves.








Endomychidae belongs to the Ladybird Superfamily, and like many Ladybird beetles, they reflex bleed, secreting noxious hemolymphs from their leg joint to deter predators. They tend to be more sculpted in outline than Erotylidae, sometimes with ridges or even spikes on their bodies

 

[Tri-Tachyon'sClown]

That last one almost doesn't look real. Beautiful creatures.

 

[Positron]

 

[bug_ensneeded9000]

SCared the crab spider away by accident. No tiny elephant for you

 

[Justwandering02]

georgous dragonfly

where I work I found this swarm of stink bug nymph

 

[BIONICLE 10127 1]

View attachment 7656120
georgous dragonfly
View attachment 7656125
where I work I found this swarm of stink bug nymph

Those are boxelder nymphs in the second pic, not stink bugs. In their adult form they look like this:

 

[Yugica]

I love wolf spiders and want to breed them for intelligence and some other traits in the future. Ogre-faced spiders are really cool also and use their webs as nets to capture prey. Sadly neither of those are insects.

Hate roaches and their close relatives though. Only the mantids can be salvaged.

I don't know why, but I read "Incest appreciation thread", I feel relieved that I did an oopsie.

You're not the only one who has had this happen to them.

 

[Justwandering02]

caught a mouse botfly. Knowing they are parasite I started to freak out for the safety of my cat

 

[𒀭Δημιουργός χάος]

On my way home I caught this magnificent, giant dragonfly nibbling on old window paint.
Damn, did I just doxed my index finger?

 

[Yugica]

That paint job must really bug him.

 

[Sirius]

flies are cool (when i dont have to see them irl)

 

[bug_ensneeded9000]

IM not a step bee... im the bee who stepped UP

 

[Yugica]

I posted a bit about this elsewhere on the forum, and I figured people here might find it interesting, but I found seemingly what could be some cool freshwater isopod sightings on inaturalist. They've been labelled under the species Cassidinidea ovalis, which is a species of isopod that seems to normally be restricted to the littoral zone in saltwater and brackish habitats on the Eastern US seaboard. Here's a picture from inaturalist to show them off. They look kind of like water-penny beetles(less so in this picture).

The sightings are in two freshwater locations that in the not-too-distant past would've been littoral zones in brackish or saltwater habitat. Here's a screencap of the map from inaturalist showing their sightings:

You can see right from it though that there are two more inland locales spotted. One locale in lake Okeechobee(also the guy behind those sightings is pretty legitimate and has over 10k posts on inaturalist, mostly in Florida):

The other more inland locale is over in Philadelphia(The guy behind these sightings is also seemingly pretty legitimate with over 5k posts):

Now Philadelphia in its past used to be all salt marshes and that area today is still not very high above sea level. Similarly, Florida as a whole is built on marine limestones and at different periods of time in the past few million years has either been largely submerged or larger than it is today dependent on sea levels. In related, odd crustacean stuff. The only real, native freshwater crabs in the US that I'm aware of are part of locales in Texas of white-tipped mud crab. Here's a picture of their sightings on inaturalist:

Also, a picture of a white-tipped mud crab:

I know from an evolutionary perspective that many kinds of saltwater species end up becoming freshwater ones when they end up trapped in their more inland locales. The idea being that over time what effectively became a salty lake becomes less and less salty over time as water flows in from rivers and out into the sea, allowing for a gradual shift for them to adapt. One issue though is that Lake Okeechobee, to my knowledge, was dry during the last ice age and certainly not a salty lake. This would suggest that these little isopods have migrated to this location much more recently. I would also think that this would be the case for the mud crabs too in their freshwater locales, but I'll get to that later. If this is the case then the isopods would also very likely be found along the Caloosahatchee river as this river has a large tidal estuarine zone and connects to lake Okeechobee. This connection however is very modern, happening via a canal network made in the late 19th century that connected one of the lakes feeding the river to lake Okeechobee but also included the removal of some obstructions and thusly drained the wetlands and some of the lakes feeding it.

From what I was looking into before too, depending on the water levels of lake Okeechobee the canal system that connects to it can and will flow back into it and an article has been written on at least St. Lucie river's connecting canals doing this. It may just be the case that this isopod is an early colonizer and if time goes on then even more saltwater species will adapt to fill in niches available, like this isopod seemingly has as there are absolutely no water-penny beetle species in Florida. It may also be possible that St. Lucie is the originator of these isopods, or that any of the more straight canals directly connecting lake Okeechobee are.

As for the mud crabs, I do have to wonder why they're only really in one general freshwater area of the US and not others, as they are found all over the Eastern half of the US's coast. I can't help but imagine that they might hint at some odd geological history that I can't find anything on so far where the area they're in was once much saltier. Just using NOAA's bathymetry map, which also shows elevation on land, places like lake Texoma are over 180m above sea level. However, said lake is also about 180-190m deep. Further, the Red River that it drains into once had a massive, natural log dam that was later destroyed. This log dam was known as "The Great Raft" and is thought to have been around a thousand years old by the time of its destruction. I wouldn't be surprised if, in fact I hypothesize, that the log jam was started from some kind of tsunami that flowed up the Red river and ended up doing something like what I hypothesize for the isopods before. This is all highly speculative though and the conventional theory that I found is that more normal flooding was the cause of the formation of the log jam.

I also really want to collect these guys. I feel like I have some kind of addiction.

 

[Sirius]

Found a photo of a fly with a dent in its eye. Thought it was cool.

 

[Yugica]

Behold the Gribble, who is not to be confused with Dale Gribble from King of The Hill:

Those are her babies on her belly. They're tiny little guys and they can eat wood. In fact they're one of the only kinds of animals that can digest cellulose on their own. Termites and other herbivores rely on symbiotic microbes to digest cellulose for them instead. I also want these guys too. I want to breed them to be freshwater so that they'd be easier to keep and I could just feed them a diet of leaves and paper. Just look at her sparkly eyes, how could you say no to that?
More gribble pics:


Also a picture of what they do to driftwood:

 

[Ventrue]

I love ladybugs, I see them in my garden sometimes.

 

[The Cringe Connoisseur]

Guys. I think OP may be a bug chaser.