Does anyone recognize this bug? Location = Santa Fe, NM.
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/0B0zTRKnct3JXdHVkNU9VYXZOb28?usp=sharing
They are happily getting it on all over my back yard. I assume the first one with the bulging torso is pregnant.
Jadera haematoloma, the scentless plant bug. This looks like a nymph. Adults’ wings actually cover the abdomen.
Thank you! And I have a Goldenrain tree, so now I know why they are so happy there. Dinner and a date.
I identified the bug correctly by taxonomy but not by common name…I must have conflated two different Google results. It’s actually called a red-shouldered bug, not a scentless plant bug.
Makes sense then.
“Jadera haematoloma, the red-shouldered bug, goldenrain-tree bug or soapberry bug is a species of true bug that lives throughout the United States and south to northern South America.”
As children in Texas we were fascinated by them, they’d be in swarms of hundreds beneath soapberry trees, constantly copulating and running all about while doing so. This was before the internet and even before Hustler magazine so we took our education where we could get it.
Connected at the tail and facing away from each other? Man, you must have grown up with some really weird ideas about sex. 