The Other Local Stilt Bug Species

2013 June 19

I found this crawling on my computer on May 26, 2012

It wasn’t very big, as you can see from this picture of it standing on the tip of a ball-point pen. In fact, it was so thin and spectral that it was practically invisible to the naked eye.

It’s definitely a true bug, based on the elongated piercing/sucking mouthpart (which is thin, and barely visible running along its underside in this next picture).

I’m pretty sure that this is the stilt bug Neoneides muticus, which is related to the other stilt bug I posted last year. Stilt bugs in general are more of an “Old World” group, with considerably more species in Europe and Asia than in North America. The two stilt bugs I’ve posted so far are both in the subfamily Berytinae, and are the only members of that subfamily that are even found around here. And the other previous one is an accidental import, so this one is evidently kind of an anomaly as the only native stilt bug in its subfamily.

After photographing and identifying this, Sam has shown me a couple that she found, and we found a number of them in the sweep-net after going through the tall grass out back. So, they are evidently very common, but because of their size and close resemblance to a bit of chaff they are rarely actually noticed.

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