The COOL-ass bug thread

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81

very neat fly.

jellyfish, if you are hunting cicadas, just check anywhere that is treed. i walk through trails in the forest and they screech and fly away as you walk near, they are so freaked out and trying to get away you can hear them clunking against branches when flying away. can also always find the shed skin from when they change to their adult form.

edit. this year i have found more than usual new things to me, especially bugs. usually i dont have my camera or i have the under water one cause its rainy but got some pics.

nephila pilipes in a molt gone wrong. fungus is bad in Taiwan, i must admit. second time i have seen this where fungus took over the spider while shedding. very amazing at night in the dew.

Unknown forest roach #1.

Unknown forest roach #2.

Ant lion

semi aquatic grasshoppers?

bumble bee

Caterpillar #1


Caterpillar #2


Ladybugs

damsel fly


unknown #1

82

[quote=“Pingdong”]very neat fly.

jellyfish, if you are hunting cicadas, just check anywhere that is treed. i walk through trails in the forest and they screech and fly away as you walk near, they are so freaked out and trying to get away you can hear them clunking against branches when flying away. can also always find the shed skin from when they change to their adult form.[/quote]

I just think cicadas look so cool (strange thing to say). I’ve seen dead ones and the shed skins, but never a live one :cry: . I can pretty much always hear them. Sometimes I think I’m so close. I’ll be looking at tree branches and under leaves, but I never manage to find them alive! It doesn’t make sense to me though, they’re often big and bright enough. I’ll just keep trying (well, next year perhaps).

83

they are still out. try getting close, standing still then moving your arm around, they should fly away. there are a couple spots here that are always, as in like clock work, so bad i actually have to cover my eyes when walking there. When close the noise can actually cause pretty bad headaches.

84

Locals don’t always seem to get the fascination with “xiao dong wu”!

85

Awesome pics, Pingdong! I took the dragon flies on my smart phone, as it seems to do a better job than my digital canon SLR (probably because I don’t have any decent lenses, though). I’m hoping to get a better lens so I can take better pics.

I don’t want the cicadas to fly away, I want them to hang around so I can see them :slight_smile: Next time I’m in the park, or have made the effort to go hiking I will try the waving technique.

86

Locals don’t always seem to get the fascination with “xiao dong wu”![/quote]

There’s just so much variety here. Plus, the majority of insects I saw growing up were pretty dull, except the occasional tortoiseshell or red admiral butterfly. Used to look cool pictures of insects, reptiles, amphibians, fish, etc. in reference books, and pretty much none of them were endemic to the British Isles.

87

[quote=“Dr Jellyfish”][quote=“Pingdong”]very neat fly.

jellyfish, if you are hunting cicadas, just check anywhere that is treed. i walk through trails in the forest and they screech and fly away as you walk near, they are so freaked out and trying to get away you can hear them clunking against branches when flying away. can also always find the shed skin from when they change to their adult form.[/quote]

I just think cicadas look so cool (strange thing to say). I’ve seen dead ones and the shed skins, but never a live one :cry: . I can pretty much always hear them. Sometimes I think I’m so close. I’ll be looking at tree branches and under leaves, but I never manage to find them alive! It doesn’t make sense to me though, they’re often big and bright enough. I’ll just keep trying (well, next year perhaps).[/quote]

Maybe there are more down south, I see live ones flying around quite often although its more common to see dead ones on the ground. When my wife was a kid they collected them and sold them for Chinese medicine. She also raised and sold Chinese silk worms . She can catch anything that moves including dragonflies. Country kids…back when it was still countryside!

Taiwan has an enormous diversity of insects, most likely due to its enormous diversity of plants!

The Japanese were fascinated by the bugs of Taiwan and there are still amazing collections in NTU from that time with millions of specimens, some of which are extinct by now.
When the KMT came quite a bit of knowledge was lost in terms of what was out there. Of course biologists in those days mostly focused on cataloging things rather than understanding their biology or ecology.

88

For sure and this has to do with the MASSIVE diversity in geography and weather. A place that can have meters of rain a day and also have no rain for half a year, can be tropical to freezing within relatively few kilometers and goes from coastal to near 4000m…leaves a lot of room for natural diversity! I used to be into “herps” and have a bunch of photos but maybe not in a bug thread. there is HUGE amount of endemism, at least with plants. And i think, perhaps equally important to plant diversity is the fungal diversity. people underestimate how important fungus is, especially as bug food. or bugs as mushroom food. This place is literally throbbing with life, at least outside heavy cities.

I dont know if cicadas are more plentiful down south, i see them almost every place i go on taiwan proper. just go to forests without a lot of human disturbance. i find lots in city parks even, but forests have insane amounts, almost deafening.

jellyfish, the canon 100mm 2.8 macro is a really good lens for macro bug shots. little old but pretty well respected. its my next toy.

anyone know what diseases african land snails carry in Taiwan? i have heard various rat diseases, but am wondering what has been actually proven.

89

[quote=“Dr Jellyfish”]
There’s just so much variety here. Plus, the majority of insects I saw growing up were pretty dull, except the occasional tortoiseshell or red admiral butterfly. Used to look cool pictures of insects, reptiles, amphibians, fish, etc. in reference books, and pretty much none of them were endemic to the British Isles.[/quote]

My brother came once, he studied insects in college. On a walk through the woods he kept saying “what the fuck is that?” and wishing he’d brought his collection kit :slight_smile:

90

Didn’t have my camera, but saw a beetle on the trail last week - bright/almost translucent amber, with a green base. Looked like a boiled sweet. Superb insect.

91

Saw this about a month ago in Nantou County on some flowers on the roadside, the Golden Turtle beetle.

funcage.com/blog/bizzare-ins … se-beetle/

It’s literally a golden colour, it’s really amazing to see.

92

Lovely critter. It looks like a goddam turtle. But that can’t serve any evolutionary purpose. God, what’s going on there?

Not much point posting on this thread without pics. I’d like to find my ‘boiled sweet’ beetle though.

93

Wow, that looks like it walked off the pages of a sci-fi novel.

94

[quote=“headhonchoII”]Saw this about a month ago in Nantou County on some flowers on the roadside, the Golden Turtle beetle.

funcage.com/blog/bizzare-ins … se-beetle/

It’s literally a golden colour, it’s really amazing to see.[/quote]

That is just weird. Would love to see one!
They would make nice Christmas decorations …

95

headhoncho, any idea on what species are found on taiwan? i have found ones like that but not gold. all colored and metalic like, but never gold. really neat.

trying to find an old discussion about a spiders taxonomy, i found this: disaster.org.tw/CHINESE/annm … upp1/3.pdf

take it with a grain of salt as within its abstract there is SERIOUS error which may make them seem not so credible. but being a Taiwan paper its always good to read it and get more local knowledge.

some pics from the last few weeks.

Liocheles australasiae - had to take this one back for students. was released next day.

Macrothele sp. I completely forget what we decided on species now…


Nephila pilipes, medium girl. was trying to get pictures of her little parasitic red pets, but couldnt do it.

Would LOVE an ID for this girl. She has done her motherly duties very well. I have found this spider twice before. they are scary fast, without egg sac, and they can jump forward. a real jump, not a scramble away/fall.


Another ID. this thing flies, was in river bottom valley near dense forest/bush. was sitting on river adn it flew on my shoulder. it arched/S shaped its back liek it was froma sci fi movie about to sting so i ble wit off. poisonous?

Another crazy fast hunter

different kind of African land snail type. never got into their classification, but found 3 distinct types in southern taiwan so far.

leaf hopper?

caterpillar eating Annnora montana. beauty kept them alive.

We were told these are what ruin our mangoes with maggots…

other stuff

? beetle?

Anyone ever found any Latrodectus in Taiwan?

96

I think it’s probably a non native that has become established in Taiwan, since all the links say it is from N.America and it lives on sweet potato, morning glory and bindweed. Having looked it up it seems that bindweed and morning glory is the same thing, and there is plenty of that in Taiwan, so they are probably living on that.

I just searched on google images for Charidotella sexpunctata, and it seems there are many different interesting varieties of this bug. The one I saw was definitely golden like the picture but not as turtle like, but it was definitely this species.

It probably looked more like this …
upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/c … nctata.jpg

Okay it seem this bug has another amazing ability up it’s sleeve, it can rapidly change colour!
blogs.scientificamerican.com/run … se-beetle/

97

This one:

[quote]Another ID. this thing flies, was in river bottom valley near dense forest/bush. was sitting on river adn it flew on my shoulder. it arched/S shaped its back liek it was froma sci fi movie about to sting so i ble wit off. poisonous?
Image[/quote]

Looks a little bit like a rove beetle. If it was then it was a good thing you didn’t touch it. Might be a good idea to wash your jacket, and touch where it landed (just in case).

98

rove beetle, googled it and the first image of that weird tail action is it. weird bugs, i gave it a big burst of smoke off my shoulder. usually i dont wear a shirt hiking specifically due to bug and plant poisons, and it’s still hot down here. i didnt touch it with anything but a twig to get a photo. reminds me of starship troopers.

99

Can’t go more cool-ass than this …

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100

… or this … although it’s a dent in the bodywork …:smiley:

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