Unidentified Bug
Location: Adelaide, South Australia
February 4, 2012 12:37 am
Living in South Australia we discovered these bugs on and around our tomato plants. Are these good or bad bugs to the tomato plants.? Many thanks John.
Signature: Johnnie
Immature Stink Bugs
Hi Johnnie,
These are immature Stink Bugs, and we believe we have correctly identified them as the Green Vegetable Bug, Nezara viridula, and according to the Brisbane Insect website: “The immature stages are brightly coloured with orange, red, black and green. This is an introduced species and a wide spread pest in the warmer part of the world.”
WTB
Location: Termeil NSW 2539
February 5, 2012 5:15 am
Hi again…this fly ?..has been hanging around,looking at me,pointed at me,shows great interest,will let me get 4ft away..hovers then darts off,comes back hovers,from 2 to 6ft off the ground,pointing toward me..,I think it lives near where I chop firewood under a large Blue Gum..seen it there twice,might get a video tomorrow.Sun shining today.Thanks.
Signature: Bugger
Bee Fly
Dear Bugger,
This is a True Bee Fly in the subfamily Bombyliinae and we found a matching image of a resting individual on the Brisbane Insect website, though it is not identified by species. The proboscis on your specimen is definitely a match to the mouth on the image we located.
Bee Fly
¶ Posted 05 February 2012 § Bee Flies ‡ ° Also tagged: Further to the Blue Banded Bee
Location: Queensland
February 1, 2012 6:52 pm
Hi guys,
As pointed out in the link you provided on my previous picture, the males of this species cluster together and hang by their jaws (?)at night from a grass stem or leaf. Here is a shot taken late afternoon on a very overcast day of a pair settling in for the night.
Signature: aussietrev
Blue Banbed Bees
Hi Trevor,
Thanks for sending this further documentation to augment your original submission of a Blue Banded Bee. Aggregations of male Solitary Bees bedding down together for the night, a phenomenon known as a bachelor party, is not an unknown occurrence on our website.
Stick Insect bug
Location: Bushland in Western Victoria
January 29, 2012 12:53 am
Hello,
I’ve discovered a bug that seems to belong to the Phasmatodea family, but because it has legs like a grasshopper (it jumps pretty fast) i’m not sure what family it belongs to let alone its genus or species. Could you identify this bug and inform me of what it feeds on?
Thanks
Signature: Jordan
Green Grass Pyrgomorph
Dear Jordan,
We believe we have correctly identified your Grasshopper as a Green Grass Pyrgomorph in the genus Atractomorpha based on photographs posted to the Brisbane Insect Website which indicates: “This grasshopper is also known as Vegetable Grasshopper. They are common in Brisbane and easily found on grasses and other garden plants.” The site also states: “The Vegetable Grasshoppers feed on different type of leaves, mainly on dicotyledonous plants.”
moth ID
Location: Termeil,NSW….state forest
January 30, 2012 8:18 am
translucent bug,2.5” long,turned up before rain not long after sunset,temp 30C plenty other bugs around,attracted to light…and there’s another moth and a Longhorn Beetle all in the one night.
Signature: Bugger
Ghost Moth
Dear Bugger,
Taxonomically, your three creatures are in three different insect orders, which screws around with our method of archiving postings, however, they are significant in that all three appeared in one night, so we are making an exception and keeping the posting intact. Your moth that is on the shoe is a Ghost Moth in the family Cossidae, and they are also called Goat Moths, Carpenter Moths or Wood Moths according to the Butterfly House website. The larvae are called Witchety Grubs. We just posted a letter yesterday with seven awesome images of a mating pair of Ghost Moths, so it would seem they are currently in season in Australia.
Poinciana Longicorn
We are nearly certain that your beetle is a Poinciana Longicorn, Agrianome spinicollis, and the larva is another wood boring grub. The photo from the Agriculture of Western Australia website is a match. The Queensland Museum website states: “This species is found in rainforest and open forest in eastern Australia. It is common in Queensland and New South Wales and also occurs on Lord Howe Island. The larvae are huge white grubs found in rotten wood, especially dead Poinciana or fig trees. It is an important pest of pecan trees. The large adults sometimes blunder into house lights. Identification Length 60 mm. This is a very large, broad longhorned beetle with khaki wing-covers and a reddish-brown thorax edged with a row of pointed ‘teeth’. The antennae are a little longer than the body.”
Your final insect is some species of Antlion in the family Myrmeleontidae and you can see some examples on the Brisbane Insect website. We believe it is most likely Heoclisis fundata which is pictured on Dave’s Garden.
Antlion
Funky Orange Caterpillar
Location: Sydney, Australia
January 26, 2012 6:19 am
Hi bugman,
We found this little guy roving around our back deck, celebrating Australia day in style. It was a slightly brighter orange colour than the photo shows. Just wondering what it might be? Obviously some kind of hornworm but I couldn’t see any entries already on your site depicting something that looked the same.
Signature: Many thanks, Bridget.
Hornworm: Theretra latreillii
Hi Bridget,
We quickly identified your caterpillar as a Hornworm in the family Sphingidae, but we had to expend some effort to properly identify it. There are many possibilities of Sphingidae on the Butterfly House website, and the thumbnails are often so small that we need to visit the individual pages. At first we thought we had identified your caterpillar as Hippontion celerio, but the Butterfly House images show a much more delicate caudal horn. A much better match is Theretra latreillii on Butterfly House, which states: “Normally the eyespot is hidden by a fold in the skin of the first abdominal segment, and the spot is only displayed when the animal is disturbed. Indeed when the skin is folded, the head and prothorax look like the upper jaw, and the first set of legs like the lower jaw, of some much larger beast, which may deter predators.” The Brisbane Insect website identifies the adult as the Pale Brown Hawk Moth.
1
¶ Posted 26 January 2012 § Hornworms ‡ ° Also tagged: Spitfire Grub?
Location: Canberra
January 25, 2012 9:54 pm
Woud you please identify this bug, found in a dwarf snow gum on 26 January 2012 at 1100.
Signature: Bill Reid
White Stemmed Gum Moth Caterpillar
Hi Bill,
After some searching, we determined that your caterpillar is a member of the family Anthelidae. According to the Encyclopedia of Life: “a small family of moths restricted to Australia, New Guinea and the adjacent Aru archipelago. At present the family comprises 74 species in 8 genera described from Australia (Edwards and Fairey 1996) and 20 species from new Guinea in one endemic genus and one genus shared with Australia. However, numerous distinct species have already been identified as undescribed in museum collections such as the Australian National Insect Collection (ANIC).” Some taxonomists consider them to be closely related to the Lappet Moths and Tent Caterpillars. We eventually identified your caterpillar as Chelepteryx collesi, the White Stemmed Gum Moth on the Butterfly House website where we learned that “This Caterpillar is a great hazard to people climbing Gum trees. Scattered over its skin are tufts of long stiff reddish hairs, which are strong enough to penetrate human skin. When they do, they are very painful, and difficult to remove because they are barbed and brittle.” Another bit of information from Butterfly House is: “It is also one of the largest Caterpillars in Australia, growing in length to about 12 cms. Some trees where they may be found most years in Leichhardt are known by local school-children as ‘sausage trees’ because the Caterpillars look from the ground like sausages growing in the trees.”
Hi Daniel
Thank you so much for this information. I have many friends here and overseas that are interested.
A great service that you provide.
Best wishes
Bill Reid
1
Giant Water Bug
Location: Queensland, Australia
January 26, 2012 12:50 am
Hi guys,
Hope you like these shots of a giant water bug that was hanging around banging into a shiny piece of stainless steel in my carport. They will often mistake a reflective surface for water and attempt to drop into it.
The bug played dead when I got close to it and it allowed me to turn it over for a shot of its piercing mouthparts. It was determined not to give itself away until I picked it up and took it over to some long grass. When I dropped it on the grass it quickly righted itself and flew away.
Signature: aussietrev
Water Scorpion
Hi Trevor,
The very flattened body and extremely long, posterior breathing tube indicates that this is a Water Scorpion, and not a closely related Giant Water Bug. Interestingly, we found a photos of a Water Scorpion from Australia submitted by you in 2008 in our archive. We decided to do a bit more research and we found the AusEmade website that has a photo of an Australian Water Scorpion from Simpsons Gap that is identified as Laccotrephes tristis and contains this information: “One of the interesting looking insects found swimming in the pools is the Water Scorpion, whose other common name is Toe-biter. These strange looking creatures are carnivores, feeding on other aquatic organisms that they can capture including tadpoles, small frogs and small fish. They swim with the tip of their long needle like tail breaking the water surface, acting as a breathing siphon. With their large pincer-like forelegs used for seizing their prey, Water Scorpions can inflict a nasty nip, although they are also known to play dead when disturbed. Once they have grasped their prey, they inject a venom that liquefy the prey from the inside, which enables the Water Scorpion to suck out the prey’s body fluid.” The Identification and Ecology of Australian Freshwater Invertebrates website also has some good information. The Atlas of Living Australiahas a distribution map.
Water Scorpion
If you look closely at your close-up photos, you can see tiny red spots which we suspect are Mites. Several sources indicate a common name of Toe-Biter which is shared with the North American Giant Water Bugs.
Water Scorpion
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