I was juicing tangerines in the kitchen when I noticed this little bug atop the pile of fruit. I took the tangerine it was on outside and tried to free it onto the rail there. The bug stuck to the fruit, scampering around as I rotated it. Eventually, it dismounted and I went inside to get my camera.
When I started taking photos, the bug accommodated me by approaching the lens. It quickly got too close so I moved to a different spot. The same thing happened. Every time I moved, the bug followed me until we both tired of the game and I left it in peace and it did the same to me.
At first, I thought it was a baby Praying Mantis because of the curve of its body, but a bit of research revealed that this is an Assassin Bug nymph. Assassin Bugs can deliver a painful bite, so maybe it was after me to take me out!
This one was only about half-an-inch long, as indicated by the average-size tangerine on the rail above and the fact the bug is standing on the thin side of a 2×4.
I saw this Milo (Thespesia populnea) flower during a walk on the South Kohala coast and liked the different views it afforded. Milo is a canoe plant, brought to Hawaii by Polynesian settlers. It’s similar to another canoe plant, Hau (Hibiscus tiliaceus), but Milo is more of a tree and has different shaped leaves, pointed as opposed to heart-shaped.
I spotted this shiny creature on the trunk of a mango tree, but wasn’t sure what it was. So I searched online using the striking details – iridescent green, red on legs, Hawaii – and the first result was a post on whatsthatbug.com. It was headlined, ‘Emerald Cockroach Wasp from Hawaii turns Roaches into Zombies!!!’ (link here). That got my attention! Within that posting was a link to a longer post with more details (here).
In brief, the female Emerald Cockroach Wasp (Ampulex compressa) stings a cockroach to temporarily disable its front legs. It does this to buy time to deliver a second sting to a precise spot in the cockroach’s brain that controls the roach’s escape reflex. The roach isn’t paralyzed, but it just stays where it is, that is until the wasp takes it by the antenna and leads its zombie prey back to her burrow. There she lays an egg on the roach, before walling up the burrow’s entrance. Back inside, the roach just waits while the egg hatches and the larva eats its way inside the roach and devours the roach’s organs. Four weeks later, a new wasp emerges from the roach and the burrow.
I was astonished to learn about this, in particular how, for the second sting, the wasp locates the exact spot in the roach’s brain using sensors on the stinger.
The source of the whatsthatbug.com description comes from Carl Zimmer who has a great article here. More information about this remarkable wasp can be found here, here, and here. And finally, a must see video of the wasp in action, including leading the cockroach to its lair, can be seen here.
Hibiscus Clayi is endemic to Hawaii, but is listed as endangered. In the wild, it’s found only in a part of eastern Kauaʻi, but this one was growing at Hawai’i Tropical Bioreserve & Garden. For more information about Hawai’i Tropical Bioreserve & Garden, go to htbg.com.
For whatever reason, I don’t usually see much activity on bougainvillea flowers and I don’t see a lot of monarch butterflies. On this occasion though, this monarch was one of several insects feeding on a group of bougainvilleas.
My house has been surrounded by spiders and their webs for most of the winter. One female Hawaiian Garden Spider has a web which angles across the living room window. I can follow the activities there from the comfort of the couch.
One morning, I raised the window blind and found this scene. The large, yellow-backed spider is the female. The much smaller drab, brown spider above her is the male, and when a male is seen on a female’s web there’s only one reason – he’s looking to mate with her. I’m not sure what the third character in this scene is. It might be a mango beetle, but it was securely trussed to the web.
What happened can be seen in the gallery. The male tried his mating moves, the female remained largely unmoved. Much of the time the male stayed on the relatively safe opposite side of the web to the female, but to mate he must venture to the other side. When he did, sometimes the female swung into action. Mostly, she seemed responsive, but one time the male disappeared in an instant. Then I saw him climbing back up the thread he’d dropped on. Something must have gone awry, but no harm done. Through all this activity, the beetle looked on, waving its little legs and antennae.
The presence of the beetle seemed to affect the delicate negotiations going on between the spiders. Sometimes, the male went over to the beetle and sort of prodded at it, but nothing more. In the early evening, the female lost patience. She straddled the beetle, shot out strands of threads, and rebound the beetle as she spun it with her legs. It turned like a rotisserie chicken in overdrive. I didn’t get photos of this as the light was fading.
Next morning, nothing much had changed. The female was still the central figure, the male still holding his position. The only difference is that the beetle had managed to push its legs and head through the engulfing threads and it was back to waving its little legs and antennae. Later that day, the male appeared to successfully mate with the female and escape alive. I last saw him wandering over to the next web along where he positioned himself carefully on the opposite side of the web spun by another large female.
The next day, there was still a female on the web but I think it was a different, smaller one than the one in these photos. The beetle was still there, still waving its little legs and antennae. That evening, the new female did the rotisserie chicken move on the beetle and retrussed it. Next morning, the beetle had freed its legs and head again and was waving its legs and antennae again.
The following day, only the new female spider could be seen!
Posted in response to this month’s Becky’s Squares challenge theme of ‘Odd.’ See more responses here.
Graham's Island 