Shield-Backed Bug
Also in the August 23, 2012 sweep-net was this little bug.
It looked rather like a small shield, and the name “shield bug” was rattling around in my brain, so I used that as a search term, and – found out that the term isn’t quite as specific as I thought. It seems that there are “Shield Bugs” in the family Acanthosomatidae, and there are “Shield-Backed Bugs”, in the family Scutelleridae. As it turns out, this one looks like one of the Shield-Backed Bugs in the genus Eurygaster.
Once again, I didn’t photograph enough features to distinguish among the 5 known species of Eurygaster in North America. So I don’t know if it is the one species that was accidentally introduced by humans, or one of the four species that are also found across North America and Eurasia, but that introduced themselves probably back during the last ice age.
Being true bugs (distantly related to Stink Bugs), they have sucking mouthparts. They live on plant juices, and evidently prefer grasses (Poaceae), and plants in the family Asteraceae (asters, daisies, sunflowers, and a few thousand other related plants). These two plant families account for probably 90% of the plants in the average lawn or grassland, so these bugs are certainly not hard-up for food.
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