Here’s the insect!

February 2, 2017 • 3:30 pm

Here’s the answer to “What’s that insect?“, via Twitter. Thanks to Matthew Cobb for sussing this out.

Yes, it’s a hemipteran (a “true bug”) in the genus Formiscurra (F. indicus), and it’s also a planthopper that’s an ant mimic. Notice the fake head in front of the real head!

See more here, including this photo of a hopper from the Catching Flies site.  Caption: “This hopper is facing right, the forelegs are waved like feelers.”

formiscurra-1

10 thoughts on “Here’s the insect!”

  2. I leave WEIT to teach a class for a few hours, and look what happens!

    I have to admit I would have said ‘fly’, b/c the head has some fly-like character, and the antennae are short, trunkated into a bristle called the arista. That is a character for many flies.
    But it is also a character in planthoppers, and in many of that group the antennae are ventral to the compound eyes, like this one is.

  4. This centimeter-wide moth was identified by evolutionary biologist and lepidopterist Vazrick Nazari, who announced the find in a paper published Tuesday in the open-access journal ZooKeys. Nazari settled on the name N. donaldtrumpi because the silky yellow-white scales these moths develop on their heads in adulthood reminded him of the President-elect’s signature hairdo

  7. Just to make this more weird: This is just the male. The female Formiscurra lacks the “ant-head” protuberance and probably lacks the ant waist. Can’t find a picture, but she’s said to be a typical, very dumpy little “piglet bug”.

    So, did this bit of predator deception start with sexual selection for a nasal horn, that happens to be just antlike enough to fool a near-sighted bird?

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