Katydid

Thank you, Martin, I love your photos too. Specially the leaf beetles. It seems you have plenty of them there in Australia!

Thank you Sergio. This would imply that nymphs spend more time under leaves or on stems while adults spend more time on leaves. I think that may be accurate in many cases. You make good points, and good photos.

Well, being not a biologist, I can only speculate about it. One thing we must have in mind, is that this picture, for example, was taken when the insect was taking sun, in plain daylight. Most of the time, they stay among the foliage, where their colours act as a camouflage. In fact, in the shadows, this pattern of red and yellow and black is much less conspicuos, and can be confounded with decaing leaves and flowers. Also, the succession of coloured stripes helps to conceal the overall shape of it's body - wich would be much more recognizable if it was completely red or yellow. And last, but not least, we must remember that many animals see in a different wave lenght than us, humans, and what wee see here may be a little different of what a predator sees...

I forgot to apologize for jumping into your conversation with Sergio. I know the question was not for me, but I couldn’t resist not saying anything.

Or other factors we haven't considered yet. Thanks for your reply and your perfect logic.

Martin, I don’t think they want to encourage predation, because in that case the colorful ones would have been wiped out and the fittest survived already; the fittest here being the camouflaging young. I think it should be either the poison alert or mimicking something else.

Sergio. Do you wonder about evolution? Why would young nymphs (bugs and katydids) so often be extravagantly colorful while their adult forms primarily camouflage??? Do they advertise toxins, for protection? Do they mimic something else? Do they encourage predation so only fittest survive? Hmmm...

Nice colors,

Woah that's cool! It looks like someone painted it :) What a fantastic little find, I wish we had such colourful insects here in the UK!!