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Acanthosomatidae, Hemiptera
Unlike the more common Pentatomoidean practice of 'lay them and leave them', the Horned Shield Bugs (Acanthosomatidae) are commonly referred to as Parent Bugs because of the care they take with raising their young. Here, what are probably themselves siblings, oversee their offspring both as eggs (on the left) and early instar nymphs.
3 Comments
Something like this in insects just captures my sense of wonder!
Yes Wow, Sinobug you have a superlative collection! Please add this spotting to the mission "Brooding behavior in insects and other invertebrates" a mission on parental care http://www.projectnoah.org/missions/8176... May I take this time to add a few technical points. If anything is entered in the Scientific name field the platform algorithm regards the spotting as identified. So if say only the Family is entered it will not appear in the unidentified category. This potentially lessens the amount of scrutiny it might otherwise receive here by users looking to identify "unidentified spottings". So if it is possible in the future that someone might be able to identify this hypothetical spotting to genus species, it might be better to leave scientific name blank and tick the "Help me ID this..." box. Of course, Family and other taxon labels are important and should be added to spottings. The description and/or tags can be used for this. Just one more minor point, since Scientific name is a dedicated field the names do not need to be placed in parentheses, nor should common names or text be placed in the Scientific name field. Well again, your outstanding spottings have graced PN's overall collection. Thanks for sharing these here!
Wow!