My first visit to Africa was in 1989, when I went to visit some friends in Zimbabwe. Back then the country was still prosperous and democratic, Toni Childs optimistically sang “No more crime in your lifetime, Zimbabwe”, and nothing indicated the darkness it would soon descend into. I spent a few weeks traveling around the…
Category: Insects
Lantern bugs in action
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…
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…
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 