Frog Hopper and Flower Wasp from Australia

bugman

March 12th, 2006 at 1:00 am

Tags

Thorn mimic?
Hi What’s That Bug,
I’m pretty good with identifying bugs in my backyard, but this one has me stumped. I found it on my washing, and was only able to get the one shot before it vanished. The closest Google can get me is a "Thorn-mimic Tree-hopper" but (a) they’re not meant to be here in Australia and (b) I can’t find any info about them whatsoever! Any help you can give would be much appreciated. Also, something else for your site: a (female) Australian wingless flower wasp.
Cheers,
Jennifer


Tree Hopper	Flower Wasp

Hi Jennifer,
Your unknown Homopteran is one of the Tree Hoppers, many of which mimic thorns. Perhaps it is an introduced species. We love your photo of the flightless Flower Wasp. Eric Eaton added this information: ” The flightless flower wasp is likely a female tiphiid wasp (family Tiphiidae) of some kind, though I’ve never seen a metallic one!”

Hi! First of all I have a postive ID for one of your pix The “wingless flower wasp” is Diamma bicolor see the wiki page here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_ant.
Peter

Update: (01/11/2007)
Dear Bugman,
I enjoyed visiting your site. It really doesn’t compete with BugGuide.net, since you have posted lots of foreign insects that they bar from that site. For example, you have some really nice photos of the primitive treehopper Aetalion (which is tropical). I thought you might like to know about the following:
(2) The “Thorn mimic” from Australia is actually a spittle bug (which they call a froghopper) of the genus Philagra.
Thanks for helping to spread an interest in Homoptera. We need to encourage the amateur.
Andy Hamilton