Fascinating
Leaf insects are almost impossible to see in nature, and scientists can’t study what they can’t see. Mr. Cumming, one of the world’s few experts on leaf insects, has never seen a leaf insect in the wild, only specimens in captivity or museums. Dr. Brock has seen wild stick insects, but never a wild leaf insect.
I’ve seen at least two wild stick insects in Taiwan but never any wild leaf insects .
Fun read it just shows how little w people know, and how we change. the funny thing.is this data was already pretty well known amkngst us phasmid hobbyists 20 years ago. Me and ither in canada, usa, germany, england, malaysia etc all were pretty well acquainted with this male femle sexual dimorphism with this and a few other species. Having not read the research by these fellows, sounds bad to comment. But by this articles viewpoint, seems rather suspect. It is amazig how much we rely on physical traits. Not even just sexual dimorphism, which humans also express externally, but age, diet and environment can all alter physical morphology.
Biology is never boring!!! Simply just vastly under studied and misunderstood. I pray for a time chemists, biologists, feld workers and industry professionals can collaborate, these answers wint take nearly so long to come out ibti the public.
As an aside, here is a pair i keep right now, in Taiwan, of the species mentioned above (which will no doubt be split once we are more familiar)
As a second aside, there are no known leaf insects native to taiwan. That i know of anyway. But we have some very ** fascinating stick insects!
And although many species born from egg have proven to be capable of parthenogenetic reproduction, i am willing to bet long term money that most, if not all, have males in the wild where sexual reproduction still occurs.
Is this a leaf insect? Found it at a B&B in Hualian this summer. The staff said they’d never seen one before.
Very cool! How big was it?
Nope, but it is a leaf mimic insect which makes the name of the former kind of silly. Yours i think still belongs to the general “katydid” group, which are more closely related to grasshoppers. A very cool find, and a fun one to watch.
A fun note, some katydids are vegan, others omni and some are some pretty intense hunters. I find lots on the farm, but not the leaf mimics that often. I reemmber once in borneo we found a massive throny katydid over 20cm in length…damn near pooped myself when i grabbed the sign and it was on the back in my hand. Really cool creatures, worthy of photographing, well done !
Not small, a couple inches long. It was very docile, let me pick it up and carry it around showing it to people.