Collaria Plant Bug
Sam caught this very leggy bug with long antennae on July 27, 2025. The surface it is standing on is a tablecloth with a fairly fine weave, so you can see that this was not a very big bug. Without taking pictures, we couldn’t see it well enough to even tell what kind of insect it was.
But with the magnified pictures, we can see that it has a piercing-sucking proboscis folded under its head, and so it is certainly some type of true bug.
The coloration of the wings, and the long orange legs with dark spots, are actually pretty good distinguishing features.
I am pretty confident that this is the plant bug Collaria meillelurii, which is one of literally thousands of mostly plant-juice-feeding bugs in the family Miridae
And that appears to be all the information available on this bug. What does it feed on? I don’t know, but presumably plants. Although there are a few of the Miridae that are carnivorous, so maybe not. How does it overwinter? Again, don’t know, some bugs hibernate, and others overwinter as eggs. This just seems to be one of those bugs that is fairly common, and most entomologists are aware of it, but it just didn’t catch anyone’s eye well enough to get properly studied. For what it’s worth, it probably isn’t an agricultural pest. Pests get studied.
It does have an inaturalist page, which may gradually add data over time, although at the moment it doesn’t have much. I confess that I haven’t worked with inaturalist much yet, I got about as far as setting up an account a little while ago and haven’t progressed beyond that yet. Maybe I should start with this one.
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