Passionvine Bug (nymphs)

Description:

These are nymphs of Leptoglossus gonagra Fabricius, 1775. They are Hemipterans of the Family Coreidae; Subfamily Coreinae; Tribe Anisoscelini. Wikipedia describes as follows: The female attaches chains of about 16 eggs in lines to twigs or stems of the host plant. These hatch after about a week and the nymphs moult five times as they grow. They are similar in appearance to the adults but are reddish when young with dark spines on head and thorax. They cluster together at first but later disperse more widely around the plant. Both adults and nymphs suck sap from the cells of the host plant, injecting toxic saliva, and this may cause the shoot to shrivel. Nymphal development takes about seven weeks and the whole life cycle takes nine or ten weeks. Females may lay a total of around sixty eggs and live for several weeks.

Habitat:

The nymphs pictured here were spotted on Passionaryang-mabaho (Passiflora foetida), growing on an uncultivated piece of land which is basically used as an entrance from the road to a rice field. Since tractors enter and exit only at harvest time, this land lies undisturbed for most of the year and becomes overgrown with a variety of wild plants. Of course, this in turn provides a habitat for numerous small creatures. In addition to these nymphs there were some fine adult specimens which I will put in a separate spotting.

Notes:

Leptoglossus gonagra is found in much of sub-Saharan Africa, southern Asia, the Pacific area, northern Australia, North, Central and South America and the Caribbean area. Its host range includes mung beans, navy beans, cowpeas, legumes, passion fruit, cacao, coffee, avocado, macadamia, mango, cashew, citrus, pomegranate and cucurbits. Wikipedia