If you enjoyed the story of lantern bugs and their assorted visitors, you can see a clip from David Attenborough’s fabulous documentary “Life in the Undergrowth” featuring these remarkable animals. Incidentally, the movie shows the same insect individuals, filmed on the very same tree on which I took some of my photos at La Selva…
Author: Piotr Naskrecki
Alien predators in my garden
On most nights I like to turn the porch light on, just to see what insects are flying in the neighborhood. Last night I stepped outside to check the light, and was instantly hit by a huge insect that bounced off my head and landed on the ground. To my surprise and delight it turned…
A giant among the smaller majority
While I can honestly say that there is no animal that I find uninteresting, none is higher on my list of the most amazing animals than the coconut crab (albeit this top place in my ranking is shared by many.) The first thing that you will notice about this crustacean is of course its size…
The Mystery of Flying Honeydew: A Strange Case of Unabashed Thievery
Yesterday I introduced the amazing lantern bugs and their fast-flying honeydew. I mentioned that ants, animals that often collect honeydew from homopteran insects, were unable to enjoy it because of the speed with which the honeydew drops were expelled. And yet, when Kenji and I started investigating the behavior of lantern bugs in a systematic…
The Mystery of Flying Honeydew
Although my entomological interests focus on katydids and other orthopteroid insects, a few years ago I started paying a closer attention to lantern bugs (family Fulgoridae), large insects remotely related to cicadas, which feed on plant nutrients that flow inside tree trunks. Lantern bugs have very long, stiletto-like mouthparts, which allow them to pierce the…
Leaf-eating leaves
If you ever have a chance to visit a humid, tropical area in South or Central America, make sure to bring a good flashlight or a headlamp with you, because if you go out into the forest at night, you may be rewarded with the discovery of one of the most amazing animals that this…
The Smaller Majority 