Saturday, September 05, 2015

Ecdysis in motion...





I thought you might need this when you realise that I have posted a second blog update so soon after the last one?

What are the exceptional circumstances that warrant such actions? Just that I found this Tortoise Sheildbug final instar nymph and it looked kind of...well, odd to me...



When I say odd, I really mean that the colour seemed very different to other late instar nymphs I have found and so I wondered if it might be close to moulting. Whether the colour was an indication of that or not, I still can't say for sure but I did return to where I found it a couple of hours later and...guess what? I had to hunt around for it and found it eventually underneath a leaf...


11:53 am

11:53am

11:55am

11:56am

11:58am

12:04pm

12:06pm


12:10pm

12:12pm



13:04pm


15:35pm


16:02pm
I decided to let the photographs do the talking for this update. I was lucky with this one that it was so close to home and I could keep popping back to check progress. I have seen this happen a few times now with different species, but it never fails to amaze me just how tricky and dangerous, let alone, exhausting the whole process is.  Hope you enjoyed seeing the pictures.

Until the next time...

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Flippin' eck I'm SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO green! Lol! ;-)
Stonking series!
Mx

JJ said...

Flippin' 'eck Maria! Soooooooo happy that you likey and feel you want to comment...continue to comment...;-) Thank-you x

Millymollymandy said...

I'm not sure if I've ever seen this Bug - but what a lovely expeirence to see this! I can't get over the colour of the bug after the moult - yes I need those smelling salts! Have yet to read your previous post as no sooner do I catch up with everyone's blogs, I take a few days off from looking and everyone has posted like mad again..... will catch up in the next few days, especially as the weather is forecast to be wet again. :-)

JJ said...

Thanks for this Mandy. Need to check my settings again as this needed approval and I thought I had set approval needed only on older posts, as that's where all the spam was appearing. Anyhow, will have a look.

I'm sure you must have come across a tortoise bug somewhere? They are fairly commonplace. They sure are a great colour when teneral though eh? No worries about catching up with MY posts...I have trouble keeping up myself and I don't have your health issues distracting me...

Thanks for the comment as always...

Millymollymandy said...

Well I was about to reply to say having checked my database of course I have seen one.... but I am getting confused because I have seen a tortoise BEETLE! I don't have this bug in my database but I'm not completely up to date with the keywording. But I don't think I have seen it. And of course I want to read your posts because they are interesting! I'm just a bit lost in moth IDing at the moment. Aaargh!

I have seen your comment on mine (thank you) but I have not replied yet - want to check out a few things first. I have been finding a few harvestmen in my moth trap including that funky one I posted last but one blog post; of course I have forgotten its name right now. Well I can't remember many latin names off the top of my head, although I never forget Zygiella x-notata! :-)

JJ said...

Hi Mandy. Yes I can see how you would get confused over the two. Hmmm...running a moth trap can be very time consuming. Unfortunately, or fortunately, depending on how you look at it, I am still finding my count is really low each time I run the trap. Even so, I often can't ID the finds I do have.

Yes, that previous harvestman was an easy one to ID...(Dicranopalpus ramosus) ;-)