Fort Bend County Master Gardeners

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Attracting Butterflies to Your Garden in Fort Bend County Beneficial Insects - Assassin Bug - Bark Lice - Bees - Dragonfly - Ensign Wasp - Lacewing - Ladybug Pests - Stink Bug - Leaf-footed Bug - Aphids Others - Praying Mantid - Large Milkweed Bug Fire Ant Control		I Wonder What That Is? Robert Goehring, FBMG S2006 Sometime around the first of August, I was puttering in my garden and trying to decide what to do with my Waxleaf ligustrum (Ligustrum japonicum) when I noticed a small, orange insect on one of the leaves. Knowing that I don’t know anything about entomology, I decided that I’d do some research to see what this critter was and determine if I should consider removing it. I decided the best way to solve this mystery was to go to the trusty internet and perform some searches. Armed with my trusty Google search engine, I entered ‘orange insect’ in the search window. Almost immediately, I received notification that there were 2,090,000 pages that met my search criteria. Whoops. Too general a search, I guess. Well, since we’re in Texas, maybe I can narrow the search down by going into the Advanced Search and adding Texas. Nice, now I only have 1,680,000 pages to go through. Sigh. I was a little discouraged so I moved on to other things. The next day, I was out in the garden again when I noticed my little insect buddy now had some friends. In fact, I counted at least 12 tiny, orange insects on my leaves. Ah, a clue. These critters must have just hatched. Now, I can do my search using ‘nymph’ in the criteria. OK. Now I’m down to about 172,000 pages. That’s still too many to search through but I start looking at some of the pages and find quite a few references to Assassin Bugs. But I don’t have enough information yet to make a factual determination. Another few days pass as I’m busy on other projects. During a lull one day, I went to visit my new friends to see how they are doing. I’m amazed to see these critters all over and I gave up counting after 30. I’m determined now to find out what these things really are. So each day, I visit them to see how they are changing. The body was initially small (not more than Ľ inch long) and orange with black long legs and antennas that appeared too big for their body. Within 10 days, I noticed one that appeared to have lost all of its color. However, upon closer examination, I realized that this was merely a husk. Ah, so this is their molt! Maybe I can see some more adult characteristics. Eventually, I found one that was bigger and better defined than the others. This one had an elongated abdomen and showed the characteristic diamond on its back. OK. It’s definitely a bug (thanks, Margo! I did actually listen when you told me that). And I noticed nubs on the back. I didn’t know exactly what these were but thought they might be the beginnings of wings. If I was correct in this assumption, I might be able to limit my search for winged insects. OK. Searching for ‘orange winged insects Texas’ didn’t do much good for me. That search returned 348,000 pages. And lots of these were butterflies. But my 4th hit was entitled ‘Species Oncopeltus fasciatus – Large Milkweed Bug.’ Yeah, maybe that’s it! No, that can’t be it. These insects are only found around milkweed plants and I don’t have any in my garden. Well, maybe I need to try a different slant. As I return to the internet, I found a great site named “What’s That Bug?” that will take your questions and images in order to provide answers. Their link is http://images.whatsthatbug.com/index.html and they list many types of insects. I also found “BugGuide” at http://bugguide.net/node/view/15740 which has loads of photos. Using these resources, I now figure I have a load of Assassin Bugs in various state of maturity. After a few weeks, the density of these insects decreased but I did find some mature ones. Here’s a photo I took just after this one captured a fly. Figure 1 Immature Assassin Bug with Victim Fly It may be hard to make out, but the bug is holding onto the fly and trying to move away from me at the same time. The best I can figure is that my friends are in the family of Reduviidae and species Zelus Longipes. They are probably the Milkweed Assassin Bug since that is common in our area but they also might be the Horned Assassin Bug ( Repipta Taurus). Both are red and black that is used to mimic the color of the milkweed bug (Oncopeltus fasciatus). That way, these predators are avoided by larger predators since the milkweed bug tastes bad to them. Figure 2 By Gerald J. Lenhard, Bugwood.org So, I finally solved my mystery. I know now that these insects are extremely beneficial to my garden as they remove many harmful insects from my garden. They can even attack and kill wasps! They are very effective predators as I learned by watching them for several days. I saw several flies and a few ‘love bugs’ bite the dust when these voracious predators snapped them up. The real reason for this article is twofold. First, be sure you know what you have before you decide you don’t want it. And, second, sometimes the internet isn’t as helpful as it could be if you don’t have enough basic information. Happy gardening! References “BugGuide”, Identification, Images, & Information For Insects, Spiders & Their Kin For the United States & Canada, website http://bugguide.net/node/view/15740 “Bugwood Network”, University of Georgia, College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences, website http://bugwood.org/ Galveston County Master Gardeners, Beneficials in the Garden, Horned Assassin Bug, website http://aggie-horticulture.tamu.edu/galveston/beneficials/beneficial-07_horned_assassin_bug.htm “The Firefly Forest”, website http://fireflyforest.net/firefly/2005/12/23/assassin-bugs/ “What's That Bug?”, website http://images.whatsthatbug.com/index.html