Green Stink Bug in Florida
And now, for a bit of a change of location: in December of 2016, the whole family took a trip down to Sanibel Island, which is a barrier island just of the coast of Florida that is almost entirely composed of seashells. This was not primarily an insect-hunting expedition[1], but I figured that I wouldn’t spurn any that we found[2]. So, on December 17, 2016, we spotted this pretty good-sized stink bug, which was about the diameter of a nickel (I didn’t think to put a nickel in the picture, so you’ll have to take my word for it).
While it is pretty bright green, and it is a stink bug, it is not the common Green Stink Bug, Chinavia hilaris, or any of its close relatives. The main distinguishing features are the reddish brown spikes on the shoulders, the little white specks all over its body, and the sharply pointed head.
This looks to me like the tropical species Loxa flavicollis, which is found in Florida, parts of Georgia, and Texas, and probably down into Mexico and the Caribbean islands. I’m not finding a lot of actual information about them, but I assume that they are plant-juice feeders.
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[1] The main reason for going was the seashells. The Great Lakes are a reasonable approximation to an ocean in some respects, but the shells on their beaches are mostly pretty sparse and kind of unexciting. And since Sam and Rosie both love seashells, we wanted to go somewhere that would have lots of them.
[2] It is good that we weren’t there primarily for the insects, because (somewhat to our surprise) there were hardly any of them. I expect that it was mostly because of the time of year, it was December, after all. But still, based on things that people have told me about Florida over the years, I’d kind of expected a lot more buggy things around. Although, we did find a lot of something that I expect largely accounts for the lack of insect life, which I plan on posting next time.
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Gorgeous creature. Did you do any snorkeling while you were there?
We didn’t snorkel, but we did go out on a fishing boat, followed by a trip to an unpopulated island for beachcombing.