It's August: Pirates and Assassins - Oh My!
Friday August 25, 2006
Read about one of the meanest looking bugs at Ijams!
It’s
August, and that means pirates. And
assassins. The other day I was on a hike
with a group of remarkably successful and enthusiastic school-age spider
hunters when we came across something that was definitely not a spider. It was an insect about an inch long, with
antennae about the length of its body.
It appeared to be covered with velvety- grey fuzz that was accented by
brilliant orange-red dots along the bottom edges of its abdomen. And it had a sword attached to its face. Okay, not a real sword, but it was a reasonable
arthropodic approximation. It was a
cute, fuzzy, grey bug with a scimitar for a nose and we all wanted to know what
it was.
The sword (actually a rostrum or beak – a delightful
piercing, sucking mouthpart) curved down and back toward his thorax, and once I
had him safely in a bug box, I could see that there was even a handy little
sheath for the tip of his dagger built into his sternum (technically his prosternum – the bottom
front of his thorax). Very cool. A little pirate bug, sailing the seas of green.
It was the
cutlass-schnozz that gave him away. The
only arthros that come with a dagger and sheath built into their face are the reduviidae: the assassin
bugs. A closer examination seals the
deal: four-segmented antennae, strong forelegs for grasping their prey, and the
half-hard-leathery-half-see-through-membraney wings folded across his back that make him a true bug (order hemiptera). There was also what looked like a
circle saw emerging from his back.
This unmistakable feature gives this particular
rediivid his name: the wheel bug. It was
the absence of this “wheel” on the back of the critter we caught that kept me
from recognizing him right away. Our captive was a nymph, enjoying his first summer, and probably one
or two molts away from acquiring his distinctive “Help-I’ve-Got-A-Circle-Saw-Embedded-In-My-Exoskeleton” look.
A
freakishly, roguishly handsome little bug.
Also good to have around. True to
their name, and like the pirates whose cutlasses they appear to wield, these
guys are vicious predators, feeding on all manner of scurvy garden pests –
especially caterpillars and other herbaceous larvae. But avast, these bugs aren’t for
handling. They can give a painful jab
with their rostrum-sword and cause severe itching, burning, and swelling. August is a good time
to look for these pirate-assassins.
They’re shy, but they’re slow-moving.
And they sound like a B-52 when they fly. There are lots of reduviids out there besides
the wheel bug, and with names like the masked hunter (Reduvius personatus) and black corsair (Melanolestes
picipes), they’re just the thing for aspiring summer
swashbucklers.
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