Today I was checking the Habanero plants and found this ugly little mo-fo. That’s the closest pics I could get without blurring them. It is about 1/4 inch long, white, almost transparent, with regular and sharply defind red/orange bands across the body and on the legs. The head and thorax is long and very thin. The abdomen is very wide, segmented, and very flat when viewed from the side. When disturbed, it raises the abdomen up, as you can sort of see in the center pic. It also seems to like being upside down. When I turned the leaf over, it immediately began to go to the underside again.
At first glance I thought it was a spider, but what I thought were forward legs are long antennae. It is an insect, and it wasn’t there yesterday, and it is alone among all the plants. Between the net and bug books I haven’t seen anything close. I haven’t killed it because I don’t know if it is beneficial, but the creepy little bastard is on borrowed time. I don’t like bugs in general, but most I can ignore. The way it looks and especially how it moves gives me the willies.
Also, if it helps, earlier a large wasp was crawling around the plants looking for food for about 20 minutes, came across this thing and left town.
Definitely some kind of Hemipteran (true bug) nymph. It’s hard to tell what kind, but it could be some sort of leaf-footed bug (Coreidae). On the other hand, an assassin bug is a possibility.
If it’s a plant bug, it could be detrimental. If it’s an assassin bug, it could be eating pests and protecting the plant. Check to see if they are sucking the plant juices with their mouthparts, or if they may be eating other insects.
To an entomologist, the name “bug” is formally limited to members of the order Hemiptera (especially the suborder Heteroptera, if Homopterans are considered to be part of the same order). They are therefore called “true bugs,” to distinguish the informal use of “bug” to apply to all creepie-crawlies.
These include the water boatmen, backswimmers, water striders, water bugs, water scorpions, plant bugs, leaf-footed bugs, stink bugs, assassin bugs, ambush bugs, and others.
We have a winner. It is an assassin bug nymph. I found the kid’s magnifying glass and was able to get a good look at the head area and comparing it to decent pics, that’s it.
Time to get some good bug books for the local area. Seen many pics of assassins and wheel bugs but never any of the nymphs. Had to get rid of the nasty thing though. Daughter has access to the plants and loves to eat bugs. I’d rather she not eat one of those.
Ancient insects had four wings, like dragon flies;
what most people call ‘flies’ have lost one pair and become Diptera;
beetles have the first pair hardened into wing cases (think ladybird)
but the Hemiptera have only one half of the first pair of wings hardened, while the rest of that pair and the other pair are membranous and wing-like.
(I say these words hetter-op-terra and* hem-mip-terra*… don’t know if that is how everybody would say them)
