@minigun-aficionado submitted: Hi! I’m from northern Indiana, USA. I was cutting this large weed down from my fence and I noticed these powdery white bumps on the stems! I thought it was some kind of mold, but then they moved a little. They still shed some kind of powder, so I didn’t bother them anymore and let them crawl back to their little colony on the stem. What might they be?
Great followup submission to the last one I posted! These are mealybugs, which are a type of scale insect.
54 notes
·
View notes
Bug question, particularly butterflies but applies to pretty much any creature where the offspring goal is quantity over quality, but what happens when bugs inbreed? YouTube gave me a butterfly vid that led me down a rabbit hole and it was mentioned that these butterflies were inbred, but my understanding of that is It's Bad because it severely limits the gene pool and causes all kinds of issues. But that's for big animals that, at most, have 10 per litter or so. When you have bugs, you're looking at *thousands* of eggs, so what happens then?
Depends on the insect! As you guessed, it's not as bad when you have so many young and don't live that long to begin with. For most insects, though, it's still not ideal.
Emphasis on most.
Hymenopterans (wasps, ants, bees) have what's called haplodiploidy--a sex determination system where males only have one set of chromosomes. The result of this is that deleterious recessive traits can't accumulate too much, because otherwise the males carrying them wouldn't survive to mate to begin with. So, inbreeding isn't quite as bad.
Most hymenopterans still try to maintain some genetic diversity, anyway--worker bees will kill inbred bees while they're still in the cell.
However, for some wasps, it's the rule. Many species--including the various fig wasps, and many different kinds of parasitoids--are almost strictly sisters mating with their brothers shortly after pupating, only mating with unrelated wasps on the off chance two mothers laid eggs in the same host!
But the cushiony cotton scale insects put even the most incestuous wasps to shame. For years, they were thought to be hermaphrodites.
Nope. At least, not in the traditional sense. Turns out females are just infected with the parasitic testicle of their father/grandfather/great grandfather etc., who has been parasitizing and inbreeding with his own female descendants for--well, who knows how long?
23 notes
·
View notes
Invigorating discovery on the magnolia tree by my school's library; a clustering of myzolecaniinae scale insects!!!! Also referred to as wax scales/tortoise scales, these guys are an incredibly absurd/little-known true bug (hemipteran). In the majority of species, the females have no limbs, antennas, or wings (while the males occasionally have all three, but scale insects have an incredible degree of dimorphism, meaning the males are nigh-recognizable as being members of the same species). Most species find a host plant, bury their mouth-parts in its bark/stem, and anchor themselves to the plant for the remainder of their entire life, enjoying delectable phloem for what seems like forever.
4 notes
·
View notes
Mealybugs
By: Cornelia Clarke
From: Everyday Biology
1946
22 notes
·
View notes
To scale
11 notes
·
View notes
#1840 - Pulvinariella mesembryanthemi - Exotic Pigface Scale
AKA Iceplant Scale Insect
Spotted growing on the Pigface (Carpobrotus sp.) growing right down at the end of Woodman Point, Perth.
The actual insect is the brown thing - the rest is her cottony ovisac, which will contain hundreds of tiny crawlers when they hatch.
A Pulvinaria was a couch used by the Roman gods for religious rituals - presumably that’s related to the common name of cottony cushion scales. The species name refers to the preferred hostplants - Mesembryanthemum is one genus of flowering plants in the family Aizoaceae, and a close relative of Carpobrotus. The scale insect probably arrived in Australia from its native range in southern Africa, but it’s also made it to many other parts of world, especially where the Iceplant was introduced as a highway planting.
Other related scale insects also derive their binomials from their host plant -Pulvinaria dodonaeae is endemic to Australia and feeds on plants in the genus Dodonaea. Another introduced cottony soft scale found in Australia goes by the name of Pulvinaria hydrangeae.
2 notes
·
View notes
How to Safely Treat Your Home and Plants of Irritating Pests
In this comprehensive article, we will dive into pests that commonly afflict houseplants, from tiny aphids to stubborn spider mites, providing you with organic, natural strategies and easy to understand tips to identify, prevent, and eradicate these nuisances. Get ready to reclaim your indoor oasis and have a pest-free environment in your home again!
According the U.S. Environmental Protection…
View On WordPress
0 notes
Thats a lot of shiny iridescent critters lately!
Custom for beeblebobble from TH
803 notes
·
View notes
i don’t know if you take requests or not, but if you do i would love to see a tomato horn worm in your style! if not, thanks u anyways and i love ur art! always so awesome seeing funky bugs on my dash
i dont typically do requests, but ive had this ask sitting around for a bit AND its for a bug, so i finally thought it might be fun to do a lil somethin. heres your guys o7
487 notes
·
View notes
Another carboniferous painting, going for something more stylized this time
2K notes
·
View notes
Great giant scale insect, Coelostomidia zealandica, Coelostomidiidae, Hemiptera
Shown are winged males mating with a large, flightless female. Found in New Zealand.
Photos by steve_kerr
470 notes
·
View notes
A male eudimorphodon ventures down to the forest to hunt for suitable nesting material.
667 notes
·
View notes
Beetrooper Scale Bomber
248 notes
·
View notes
Cottony cushion scale insect
By: Anthony Bannister
From: Éditions Rencontre Cards
1976
18 notes
·
View notes
shrimps is bugs
336 notes
·
View notes