Subject: bug I found in my front yard
Location: foothills of NC
May 15, 2013 8:03 am
I found these little beetle looking bugs in the foothills of NC. I have never seen them before.
Signature: melissa

Oak Treehopper Nymphs

Hi Melissa,
These are immature Oak Treehoppers, Platycotis vittata.  According to BugGuide:  “Hatching occurs in Spring in the South, and in late Spring in the North. Larva pass through five instars, and adults and larva form aggregations along oak twigs of up to 100 individuals. Females seem to exhibit protective behavior, keeping predators away from the young.”

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Subject: Swarms on front porch in Florida
Location: Jacksonville, FL
May 9, 2013 8:22 pm
Hi, I have these little critters swarming my front porch and coming in my front door in the evenings. A lot of them! My son says that he was stung by one. They are about the size of a house fly. It is early May here and the nights are starting to warm up. There is a light on the front porch and it appears they are attracted to that.
thanks for your input….
Signature: Jaxgnat

Two-Lined Spittlebug

Dear Jaxgnat,
Thank you for reporting that the Two-Lined Spittlebugs, Prosapia bicincta, are currently common in Florida.  Like other members of their order Hemiptera, Spittlebugs have mouths designed for piercing and sucking, and we imagine that thought they feed on plants, they are likely capable of biting a human.  According to BugGuide:  “In the immature (nymph) stage (surrounded by the “spittle” foam which protects them, and which they produce from juices they suck from the plant) they feed on centipedegrass, bermudagrass and other grasses, including occasionally corn.  Adults feed on hollies – they feed on the underside of leaves, and damage shows up as pale mottling not usually visible from above.”  In the future, if you want to control their numbers, you should probably cut the grass with the “spittle” before the winged adults have a chance to mature.

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Subject: Colorful Little Guy
Location: Cambridge, MA
May 11, 2013 1:03 pm
Hi,
I found this guy sitting on the leaf of a sunflower. It’s maybe 15 mm long and i found him in October. Sorry i didn’t get more photos.
Signature: Love to know the answer

Candystriped Leafhopper

Dear LTKTA.,
This lovely insect is commonly called a Candystriped Leafhopper and its scientific name is Graphocephala coccinea.  See BugEric for more information on this colorful insect that sucks nourishment from tender plants.

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Subject: Some bugs from NC
Location: Wake County NC
May 4, 2013 5:27 am
My cousin’s wife snapped this pic in NC, around the Wake county area. What might these little buggers be?
Signature: Regards

Oak Treehopper Nymphs

These are immature Oak Tree Hoppers, Platycotis vittata.  Adults have wings and some have horns that make them look like thorns.

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Subject: tree hopper species?
Location: Blythewood, SC
April 23, 2013 8:29 pm
Found a bunch of these all huddled together on a branch. Some had a horn, others didn’t. I am guessing male and female. What species is this? Thy did not want to move or come off the branch.
Signature: ?

Oak Treehopper

Dear ?,
The Oak Treehopper, Platycotis vittata, comes in both horned and hornless variations that have nothing to do with the sex.  Thank you for supplying photos of both variations in a single posting.  There are also striped and solid colored individuals.  You can read more about the Oak Treehopper on BugGuide.

Oak Treehopper

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Subject: Giant mealybug ? Scale?
Location: Glendale, California, USA
April 9, 2013 9:30 pm
Greetings Bugman – It is windy indeed around the corner here in Glendale!
Yesterday I removed the ties around a wood stake that was supporting a newly planted albizia tree in my backyard. Bright orange, egg-yolk-looking stuff smeared on my fingers and I found little groupings of these creatures beneath several of the ties.
They look like mealybugs, but they are huge! A quarter of an inch long, at least. Can you identify them? Are they beneficial, destructive, or neutral?
Thanks in advance.
Signature: Janine in Glendale

Cottony Cushion Scale

Hi Janine,
It is currently calm, but we understand the winds are supposed to return today.  We believe these are Cottony Cushion Scale, and we believe that is the insect we found on our endangered California Black Walnut last year.  When we manually smashed them, they were orange.  You can read about the Cottony Cushion Scale on BugGuide where it states:  “Hosts include many plants, though in FL Citrus and Pittosporum are most commonly affected.”  The University of Florida Featured Creatures states:  “The mature females (actually hemaphrodites) have bright orange-red, yellow, or brown bodies (Ebeling 1959). The body is partially or entirely covered with yellowish or white wax. The most conspicuous feature is the large fluted egg sac, which will frequently be two to 2.5 times longer than the body. The egg sac contains about 1000 red eggs (Gossard 1901).”  You should try to eliminate the Scale.  According to the Featured Creatures:  “The cottony cushion scale can severely damage trees, resets, and nursery stock. Decreased tree vitality, fruit drop, and defoliation result from the feeding of this scale. Most damage occurs from the feeding of the early immature stages of the scale on the leaves, where they settle in rows along the midrib and veins, and on the smaller twigs. The older nymphs continue to feed, but migrate to the larger twigs, and finally, as adults, they settle on the larger branches and trunk. This scale is seldom found on the fruit. Added damage can result from the accumulation of sooty mold due to the honeydew excreted by the scale.”

Thank you so much . Off on scale safari I go.    Janine

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Subject: Cicada from Guyana
Location: Guyana , Iwokrama
March 31, 2013 4:31 am
Hi,
I’d be very happy if you could identify this cicada for me. Found it in Guyana at Iwokrama River Lodge.
Thanks!
Signature: Karin

Froghopper

Hi Karin,
We were out of the office when your identification request arrived and we are currently trying to catch up on all our unanswered mail.  It seems in our absence, we missed Maria Sibylla Merian’s 366th birthday that was noted on Google Doodle and picked up by all the major news outlets including the LA Times, Huffington Post and National Geographic.  We did our own lecture on Maria Sibylla Merian at the Getty in 2008.  Since Guyana is next to Suriname, we thought it was appropriate to mention that here.  We don’t believe this is a true Cicada, but rather one of the other closely related Hemipteran families that are classified with Cicadas as free living Hemipterans.  Perhaps we can get a more definite identification at a later date.

Froghopper

Karl Provides and ID
Hi Daniel and Karin:
Your bug is a Spittle Bug or Froghopper (Auchenorrhyncha: Cercopidae). I am fairly certain that the correct ID would Schistogonia simulans (perhaps = S. cercopoides). I could not find any easily accessible images or information online, but I was able to find it by browsing through an online (downloadable) version of the book “Cercopid Spittle Bugs of the New World (Hemiptera, Auchenorrhyncha, Cercopidae)” by Gervásio Silva Carvalho and Michael D. Webb (2005). Several other South American cercopids look similar; for comparison you could check out Laccogrypota praetor. Regards.  Karl

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