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Project Noah Nature School
Zelus renardii
Long legged insect with long slender multi-colored body. Black spotted legs and long antenna. It had an ant in the first three images. The second pic is upside down. It was underneath the leaf so you're looking at its underside. It crawled on my glove so I snapped a couple pics before I placed it back on a leaf. This nymph of this species has a special adaptation to help it catch prey (see notes).
Cape Honeysuckle and Bougainvillea leaves in backyard.
"Zelus possesses a unique sticky trap predation strategy. Species of Zelus (Harpactorini) such as ... Z. renardii have been found to secret sticky substances from unique dermal glands on the front tibiae, which are smeared onto setae that resemble leaves of sundew. The ontology of this behavior is interesting. Newly hatched nymphs do not posses dermal glands or produce secretions. Instead, they collect material from the sticky coating of eggs that the female produced and use it for prey capture. Tibial dermal glands start developing from the second instar on." - UC, Riverside
Spotted on Sep 14, 2011
Submitted on Sep 14, 2011
10 Comments
OK, I know it's a month overdue but thank you textless! I've only recently turned on the email notification so I've apparently missed some before that :)
Wow, what an amazing series!
Thanks KarenL. These bugs are cool. I hope to find an adult someday too.
Great shot Cindy!
I spotted another one that caught an ant. It's so cool how they hold their pray before eating it.
:) Agreed!
Great. BugGuide *is* awesome.
Awesome! Thank you lori.tas! I think I found it using your link.
It looks like the nymph of an assassin bug, but I'm not sure which one. You can try this site: http://bugguide.net/node/view/166/bgpage...
I'm thinking it's a Acanthophysa echinata Nymph but I can't find an image that looks like this one.