Today's friend, is this cheerful hoverfly! Surely in the Syrphus genus, and likely a female S. ribesii - the common banded hoverfly! I say likely, as there are three main Syrphus species of hoverfly found in the UK that are very hard to distinguish, luckily this lady has a distinctive yellow hind femur or I'd have no hopes of an ID 😊

Their strange slug-like larvae feed on aphids, helping to keep plants healthy, and the adults feed on nectar while helping to pollinate flowers 🥰

#bug #bugs #nature #biology #entomology #BugsOfMastodon #wasps #photography #insects #bugPosting

Have been trying to get into the habit of posting one bug picture a week to Instagram so I figured I might as well post them here too!

This is one of my fav pics! Oedemera nobilis (false oil beetle) and Oedemera lurida chilling on a flower, two different species of beetles in the same family just vibing

#bug #bugs #nature #biology #entomology #BugsOfMastodon #wasps #photography #insects #bugPosting

I bring you: the stuff of nightmares

...what? No not the wasp, the tree!

This was ID'd as a metric paper wasp (Polistes metricus) on iNat, but I don't know enough about wasps to weigh in on that one. What I do know is that the flower it's feeding on, while pretty, belongs to the dreaded callery pear (Pyrus calleryana), a noxious invasive plant in my region which displaces our similarly pretty, and much tastier, native wild plum species. Regardless, this tree proved to be a great place to see all sorts of pollinators in action, as it's one of the few things in full bloom right now.

Bonus points to anyone who can identify the smaller insect friend on the same flower as the wasp; I didn't notice it until I was editing the photo and I have no idea what it is!

#bugposting #insects #wasps #NaturePhotography #photography #Bloomscrolling

Bugposting will continue until morale improves.

Here we see a horned passalus beetle (Odontotaenius disjunctis) carrying out a vicious attack on my boyfriend's shoe; unfortunately as the shoe was not made of rotting wood, the beetle's efforts were in vain.

#bugposting #beetle #insects #HornedPassalus

I've decided today is bugposting day so here's a CHUNKY friend that I'm told you probably shouldn't touch. This is an unidentified species of oil beetle (genus Meloe), if you think you know the species feel free to throw suggestions in the replies or on the iNat observation

#insects #bugposting #oilbeetle #NaturePhotography #photography

This is one of the cutest, most adorable insects I've encountered.

Back home in Mexico city (in a time where our mountains actually had trees), these little fellas appeared in rain times. My parents called them "palomitas de san Juan", altho I'm not entirely sure they're the same species. Their spanish name is "crisopa".

Its latin name is Chrysoperla carnea, and is beneficial for gardens because it eats the aphids that plague roses and other plants.

http://macronatura.es/2020/02/10/crisopa-chrysoperla-carnea/

#insect #bugposting

Freshly peeled ladybird

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