Mating Leaf Footed Bugs

bugman

February 25th, 2009 at 9:50 am

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bug love

Bug of the Month – Feb 2009, eating habits?
Tue, Feb 24, 2009 at 4:34 PM
Hi, I live in Phoenix, AZ and my kids and I were in our backyard and noticed these bugs my son refered to as “lobster bugs”. We came inside and found your site. Thanks for the science lesson! I was wondering if these plant bugs opened the pomagranate or did they find them and begin to eat them? Is this their plant of choice or will any do?
THS
North America

Leaf Footed Bugs Mating

Dear THS,
The insects in your photos are mating Leaf Footed Bugs or Big Legged Bugs, probably Leptoglossus zonatus as depicted on BugGuide. We often see this species on ripe pomegranates in Elyria Canyon Park in the Mount Washington area of Los Angeles. The adult insects are also attracted to our tomatoes. These insects have sucking mouth parts rather than chewing mouth parts. The Leaf Footed Bugs use their sucking mouth parts to pierce the skin and suck the juices from the plants. Enzymes that the insects release create bruise-like irregularities in the fruit. The ripe pomegranates split their skins on their own.

Leaf Footed Bugs Mating

Mating Leaf Footed Bugs (October 31, 2006)
Mating Eastern Leaf Footed Bugs (September 20, 2007)
Leaf-Footed Bug (September 17, 2006)
Leaf Footed Bugs (October 3, 2009)
Leaf Footed Bug Hatchlings (November 20, 2009)

Comments 2

n2guns wrote:
I would agree with L. zonatus. These Leaffooted Bugs have the yellow/white spots on the pronotum which are visible in this submitted image.

http://bugguide.net/node/view/164495
Posted 30 Apr 2009 at 12:05 am ¶
treelight1 wrote:
I have a control for the “leaf-footed bug” we have a small orchid and were plagued with this insecticide resistant insect. We tried seven, malathion, various pepper based safer formulas, nothing worked. We even tried vacuuming them off the Pomegranates, which was very ridiculous indeed. Finally we sewed rectangular bags out of fiberglass screen, about the size of lunch sacs. We covered the young fruit and tied the bags on the stems. Floating the fruit in the center of the stiff screen sac. this effectively stopped them and was an organic solution. It also allowed the pomegranate to ripen well.With out the bacteria injected by this little devils piercing mouth parts. The bags are reusable season after season. If you want to order some from me email. They are quite interesting to look at unless you have loads of them breeding all over your pomegranate harvest!
Posted 23 Sep 2009 at 7:55 pm ¶