A worldwide community photographing and learning about wildlife
Project Noah Nature School
Pentatomoidea, Phloeidae, Phloea subquadrata
The bark bugs are a small neotropical family of hemipteran insects in the superfamily Pentatomoidea. They are known by their social behavior and oarental care. The female bugs carry their brood under their body, fixed to their abdomen, as can be seen in photo #3. Photo #4 shows other bugs in the same tree, and photo #5 shows how it looks like when resting on the tree. Hard to see, huh?
Three species are known within this family, and no one looks exactly as this one...
Spotted on Nov 19, 2012
Submitted on Nov 20, 2012
31 Comments (1–25)
Thank you Leuba.
Missed this one Sergio.Brilliant spotting !
Great work, especially getting the babies
Awesome!
Diaz José Miguel, you made my day. To know that you got a new understanding of the beauty of these creatures puts a really big smile on my face. That is what Project Noah is all about, and that is why I love it.
How did I miss this a year ago? Oh, yeah... because you had a couple thousand spottings at the time! ;-) This is the neatest thing I've seen all day. :-)
bayucca and Lauren, thank you very much for your input. I'll go with P. subquadrata. I was unsure because the fonts I have aren't very reliable. But Erik Guilbert's article is very good, and I'll stick with him. :-)
Phloea subquadrata?
http://photoentomologia.blogspot.ch/2011...
http://www.eje.cz/pdfarticles/180/
http://www.fotocommunity.de/pc/pc/mypics...
Beautiful pics! although the one with the siblings is kind of... strong! hahaha normally I'd say this guys are disgusting but trough the noah project I have learned to see the beauty on these animals! thanks!
WONDERFUL! You found it! I was reading that the 3 known species (and now yours if a new species) are all from Brazil. Amazing. Such a wonderful thing. This article (that you probably already saw) talks about maternal care in these bugs, which is so obvious in your pictures. What is still a mystery, is how and on what, the nymphs feed. The larger nymphs are on the bark, obviously feeding, but the tinier nymphs stay under their mother. Congratulations.
http://www.eje.cz/pdfarticles/180/.
I finally found a (partial) ID for this bug. The problem is, it is not an exact match to any of the three known species within family Phloeidae...
Awesome spotting! Congrats on your 2,500! A wonderful landmark for someone with an even more wonderful personality! I love all your photos, Sergio, keep on spotting! :)
Juan, it is done. Thanks for remembering me.
Thank you all for the nice comments. Lauren, I got your e-mails, very nice photos and bugs. I am planning to go back to where I spotted these ones to take more pictures, I'll try to update the info, ok? Thank you for your help.
Hi Sergio. I sent you some pictures of nymphs similar to these. I sent them to your e-mail, I didn't know what else to do with them for you to see them. They are supposedly Pentatomids. I also sent you a picture of another species of Pentatomid taking care of her young underneath her. And I sent you some information to check, if you can go and get one of the adults, so we can have a look at some of the morphological details (not visible in the pictures) that may help determine if it is a Pentatomid, Aradid or something else.
Saludos.
Nossa Sergio, que impressionante!!! Grande série!
Nice bug Sergio, I specially like the second picture.
By the way, you are invited to submit this picture on Mimetic Animals mission
Congratulations Sergio on your 2500th. All superb!
#3 incredible!
Awesome spotting, congratulations too :)
3rd picture is incredeble!
Amazing spotting! Congrats on the 2500!
Incredible spotting!
Quite the mystery ! Very nice spotting !
Magnificent Spotting !
I have never seen such a bug before.
My guess is that these are some unique species of bark bugs.