The Backyard Arthropod Project

S_ caught this huge beetle for me near the end of July, I don’t remember if she caught it in the house, or outdoors[1].

I’m pretty sure it’s a New House Borer, Arhopalus productus. Once you get beetles this large, there generally aren’t a lot of possiblities, and the two dimples on the pronotum behind the head are supposed to be pretty characteristic of the species. If she caught it indoors, that wouldn’t be too surprising, because they are commonly found in new houses[2] within the first year after construction. They are one of the few wood-borers whose larvae infest dry, dead wood. Like, for example, piled lumber in a lumberyard.

Continue reading ‘New House Borer’ »

On January 10, I caught this tiny gnat when it landed on my computer screen while I was reading my email. I had to freeze it to get it to hold still while I took pictures

This isn’t the first time little gnats landed on my computer screen, they are constantly around the house at a low level and are drawn to lights. Such as a computer screen in an otherwise dimly-lit room.

Continue reading ‘Fungus Gnats’ »

This is why it is a good idea to quarantine new plants that you bring home.

This little bugger is one of dozens that we found on a potted orchid that we were given by a friend (who incidentally raises a lot of orchids). We’d been keeping this new plant separate from our other house plants, not so much by intent as because there wasn’t room with the others. It’s a good thing we did, because once an infestation of parasitic insects like these gets established, it is darned hard to get rid of them.

Continue reading ‘Fringed Orchid Aphids’ »

On December 5, we got a Christmas tree. Sam picked out a Balsam Fir, which we brought home and set up, with no particular problems[1]. But then, on December 22, S_ found a few dozen of these little guys suddenly appearing in the house. Coincidence? I think not.

Continue reading ‘Small bugs from Chrismas tree’ »

While we did find this one inside the house, it was our own fault: he was carried in on some lettuce that we harvested from the garden in August.

For scale, that’s my knuckle he was crawling on, so he was not very big – about 6 or 7 mm long, and pretty skinny.

Continue reading ‘Small yellow and black syrphid fly’ »

This beetle was photographed back in August. I’m not sure whether to classify this as a “found in house” or “found in yard”, because this particular one was hanging out on the doorjam and was most likely trying to get in when it died there. Most summers, we get significant eruptions of them, although this year they were not as common as they have been in the past.

Aside from the color, they are generally similar to the Clover weevils that are also pretty common around here, with the blunt, short snouts and the armored wing covers that wrap quite a way around the abdomen.

Continue reading ‘Green Immigrant Leaf Weevil’ »

Last Sunday, we found this larva in a corner of Sam’s dresser drawer. It was pretty hard to catch, it could run quite fast and could easily squeeze down into small crevices in the wood, but eventually I got it into a small plastic container and got it up to the camera.

Continue reading ‘Beetle larva, probably predatory’ »

S_ was given a vanilla bean orchid plant[1] a while ago, and it has been growing like crazy in a pot on the kitchen windowsill. Until, that is, she noticed that the growing tips were starting to die back. On closer investigation, she found that the tips of the plant were infested with these:

They are some type of basic green aphid[2], one of the very large family Aphididae. It took almost six months for them to put in an appearance, so I doubt that they were on the plant when we got it. They are probably a local species that got in through an open window.

Continue reading ‘Green Aphids’ »

So, I came home on July 15, and Sam proudly showed me this fly sitting on a magazine. She had chased it around the house so much that it was too exhausted to move, and so it just sat there while I took pictures:

It’s one of the horse flies, which are some of the more obnoxious biting flies [1]. The things that make them obnoxious are that they are big flies (over a centimeter long), have a tendency to circle my head for a long time before trying to bite, and then when they finally *do* land to bite (usually right on the back of my head, at that point where the hair swirls around in a circle[2]), the bite hurts like the dickens and bleeds freely, because their mouthparts look like this:

Continue reading ‘Horse fly’ »

We’re having a twofer this week, because I have two subjects with only one good photo each, and not enough to say about either one to warrant a full entry

The first is a little guy, about 4 millimeters long, that S_ found scooting across the floor in the living room. It was very like an earwig, with a similar sheen, flexibility, and tendency to squirm out of tiny places. The only thing is, it didn’t have the forceps at the end of the abdomen. Unfortunately, I only managed to take four nearly-identical pictures before it suddenly scooted off and disappeared under my photography stand, so this is the only real picture available:

At first I thought maybe it was an earwig nymph, since I wasn’t sure whether or not earwigs have their forceps all their lives, or only develop them as adults. The folks at Bug Guide soon set me straight, of course: V. Belov quickly identified it as a Rove Beetle in the subfamily Tachyporinae, which for some reason are called “Crab-Like Rove Beetles”. These are minute, mostly-predatory, very un-beetle-like beetles that generally live in the leaf litter and under rocks. They are very common, but not often seen, because they are pretty tiny guys. They have wings tucked under those little pads on the back, but it is evidently quite a project for them to unstow the wings and take flight, so they mostly don’t. I understand there are a few thousand kinds of rove beetles, so we certainly aren’t done with them yet.

Continue reading ‘Small Rove Beetle, Large (Fishing?) Spider’ »