Flat Bug
I found this odd-looking bug crawling up the side of our house on May 18, 2012. It was about 6 mm long, unusually flat, and had very thick, distinctly-segmented antennae.
It looks to be one of the “Flat Bugs” in the family Aradidae. Most of the members of this family are in the genus Aradus, which contains about 84 North American species which mostly look very similar to this one.
It’s a bit unusual to see these out in the open, as they generally live under tree bark or in shelf fungi. They are well-camouflaged as a little bark chip, and would normally be practically invisible.
They mostly eat fungi, so they would generally be found in rotting wood. Although, at least one species is a pest of pine trees, so they obviously don’t all eat fungus.
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I love the name. When I first saw the title of the post, I figured it was one you couldn’t identify and you just gave up. Now I think the entomologists ran out of names and they gave up.
At some point, the diversity of insects overwhelms the diversity of language.
KT: Yep. Or, at the very least, they couldn’t really come up with anything more clearly descriptive of exactly what it is. I mean, look at it – it might as well be the dictionary illustration for the word “flat”. And it’s a true bug. Calling it anything other than a “flat bug” would be obviously dancing around its perfect, almost Platonically ideal flatness!
Now I need to find some flatworms.
Do these flat bugs jump?
Kristi: No, I don’t think they jump. This one didn’t, and its legs don’t seem to be built for it.