Welcome to Gaia! :: View User's Journal | Gaia Journals

These are most of the bugs included in my Insect Collection from my Entomology class.


[imghttp://photos-a.ak.fbcdn.net/photos-ak-sf2p/v647/41/11/1635185653/n1635185653_78344_8872.jpg[/img]
This is a neat little tree cricket that was making SO MUCH NOISE IN MY BEDROOM ONE NIGHT! @_@

My pretty..... red eyed ._. ..... Katydid. ^w^ I love how leafy it looks.


A nifty photo of my acrididae grasshopper.


A photo of my Libellulidae

My Aeshnidae... There's a way to tell the two apart Aeshnid's eyes are closer together while Libellulid's are further apart, also there's a vein in the wing that's at a diagonal on the Aeshnid up by the dark spot at the ends, the Libellulids don't have that.

A Zygoptera (suborder) Coenagrionidae (family)They're in the Odonata order with dragonflies.

Side view, obviously they hold their wings like that and dragonflies don't... so as in that's a way to tell them apart, I'm sure most people can though, that's pretty easy to see. ^w^

A Mantidae family member from the Mantodea order.... yeah I totally aced that one on the exam. XD

An Apidae (family) Hymenopteran (order) ^w^ And their hairs are branched.

OH OH! So if you can see, and in the next one it's more obvious. Some ants and wingless wasps (or winged ants) look the same, the only way to tell them apart is that weird thing between it's torso (thorax) and bottom (abdomen). It's a joining segment that's shaped like a spike or nodule... Ants have those... So this is in the Hymenoptera order, and the family is Formicidae.

There, the spike is way more visible on this one.

My nifty vespidae, he's bigger than paper wasps, and mostly black, I thought he was quite pretty.

And there's my paper wasp vespidae.

There's a Sphecidae wasp, thread waisted.

The sphecidae's pretty mandibles ._. .... ~shivers~


There's another sphecidae wasp with pretty purple iridescent wings.

It's waist isn't as thread like but sphecidae's have a two cells on their wings that you can identify them easily with.

This is my Ichneumonidae wasp that dad brought me from Polly Bemis Ranch up North in Idaho. Ichneu's have a small cell in their wing too that you can use when identifying them. ^w^ And he has a pretty curly que antennae..... the other one fell off >3>

The little tiny cell is a little more visible in this one... it's up towards the tip, where the veins seem to merge, there's a small circle there....


Here's my culicidae ^w^;;; one lucky guess what that is >.> .... look at the pretty sucking (haustellate) mouth part.... Mosquitoes are in the diptera family with flies.

And this is my pretty big crane fly, Tipulidae. I always called them mosquito hawks.

Here's my syrphidae fly! He's looks like a pretty bee. Syrphids have a vein running the outer edge of their wings, you can see it in this one easily. It's going against the other veins.


BOMBYLIIDAES! Fuzzy hover flies... And ones with spotted wings... they're not fuzzy.... but they're in the same family... They're cute I think >w< and I just like saying BOMBYLIID >w<

And another bombyliidae ^w^


Here's my awesome Asilidae... robber fly.... they bite... I wasn't bitten but I don't want to be... they're really noisy... I thought he was going to fly THROUGH my head. @_@ They're huge!


Another pretty Asilidae, I'm sad though, his eyes were a green but as he dried they turned black and brown... They were gorgeous!


That's when I was first pinning him, he was so pretty!


Here's my pretty blue Calliphoridae

This is a cicadellidae. Homoptera (suborder) in the Hemiptera order. Their heads are pointed.

Here's a creepy looking Reduviidae.... Hemiptera, Heteroptera (suborder) Reduviidae's vector chaga's disease ._. just so you all know XD Because you'll be able to say "Oh watch out there, that's a reduviidae." XD They suck your blood.

Rhopalidae... Theese are those obnoxious, plentiful, elder bugs that swarm around houses and stuff =.= They're so annoying... a friend's dad called them Republicans "because there's so damn many of them." XD

TOAD BUGS! Dear god these things are cute! They hop around on sandy beaches! Like... ponds or creek beaches... not ocean beaches... Gelastocoridae in the Hemiptera order.


Here's my weird looking pentatomidae, a Hemipteran.

Another prettier pentatomidae... These are you stink bugs or shield bugs... they're really pretty and eat plant eating bugs... so they're good for us.

Everyone, this is Gerrid....ae..... He's a water skipper. The two long things in the front by his head are NOT antennae ^w^ they're his front legs, he catches things with those.

My tenebrionidae beetle! Coleoptera order. Those are the darkling beetles that stick their rears up in the air when you bug them, but I found out their not saying "I smell, can you smell me?" They're saying "Go on, I dare ya, my shells harder than you think!"

These things creep me out because they're fast and vicious.... but they are SO pretty! Cicindellidae family in the coleoptera oder.

I remembered their family because these guys are CIC...indellidae..... as in their sick.... like awesome... yeah XD

What's neat is the difference in leg anatomy between these guys and my tenebrionid beetle. The Teneb's legs are more robust and the tiger beetle's legs are an obviously more agile construction, you can tell! Tenebrionids are slow but strong, they don't need to run away from enemies, but these guys are fast and able to move around more easily, of course they're not running away either, they're the most aggressive beetles we have here... says so their nasty looking mouths. XD

This is my weird Carabidae beetle....

I say weird because.... I don't think you can see it TOO easily, but on it's back leg, down by the base of it (it's trochanter) the segment forms a long spike, almost the entire length of it's femur.... It's the trochanter segment. It stumped my professor when he was helping me identify it! XD

This is my plain black boring meloidae beetle XD I like his head, I think he's got a cute face.

Here's another prettier bigger meloidae. Isn't its shell (elytra) pretty?!

And a very pretty head.


A whirligig beetle! Gyrinidae family. How appropriate, GYRinidae XD He's really smooth. They spin in circles in water, they're aquatic, it's back legs are shaped like fuzzy paddles.

This is my pretty jewel beetle! Buprestidae. They're all pretty...

There's its pretty elytra.

This is my staphylinidae, a rove beetle... And it IS a beetle... it totally stumped me at the beginning of the semester on the order exam, I'm not used to seeing beetles whose elytra don't even cover their abdomens.


My cute little weevil... Curculionoidae. I LOVE their snouts.


Here's the pretty Chrysomdelidae beetle mom brought back from Polly Bemis of course. Leaf beetles.

Here's a longhorned beetle, Cerambycidae.

Another Cerambycidae, these are the ones in trees at dusk making those annoying clicking sounds @_@


A gorgeous cerambycidae.

This is the same as that weird flying bug in my Artsy Insect album, he's a cerambycidae too. They're red milkweed beetles.... THEY SQUEAK! <3

The flying one.

Here's the hissing cockroach I cooked... It's funny, he's perfectly dry and preserved like the others, but he's so much heavier... Actually it's a female >.> She doesn't have those two nobs on the top of her protective hooded pronotum, it covers her head. And her head faces so far down that it kind of points backwards. XD
I like hissing cockroaches... they're slower than others ._. That's important to me... I like slow things Owo .... Less creepy. XD Blattodea (order) Blaberidae (family)

Here's the noctuidae moth I caught out at the Corn Maze. There's it's haustellate mouth part... Yes it's the same kind of mouth part as a nasty mosquitoes >w< Obviously though it's not for sucking blood.

A top view.

Here's my Nymphalidae, these guys are best known for mimicking Danaidaes, the Monarch butterflies...

This is another smaller yet prettier noctuidae.

Here's my somewhat beat up ( I had a hard time pinning him) Pieridae butterfly. Al moths and butterflies are in the Lepidoptera oder.

Here's my baby ;-; Charlotte... She's from the Phasmatodea order, in the Phasmatidae family. Since I had her for a while I went ahead and looked up the rest, Extamosoma Tiaratum (genus and species). They're from Asutralia, Thorny Devil Leaf bugs, or giant prickly stick bugs, and these things are hermaphrodites ._. ... meaning the females will lay eggs.... REGARDLESS, every three hours =.= which I had to crush since they're not native and they eat A LOT and reproduce asexually. =.=

After she died though, I had a few left, so I'm trying to hatch them so I can have more... If they do mate sexually with a male, the eggs hatch into WINGED thorny devils @_@ ... it would be terrible...

Earwig ._. yay... Dermaptera order, Forficulina family >.< I've always hated these things, I used to be deathly afraid of them, not so much anymore... but I still don't like them ._.

Here's my caddisfly. Trichoptera order, and the Limnephilidae family. They are a lot like moths, but they don't have scales on their wings quite like moths and butterflies (that dusty stuff) and they're larvae are aquatic. They also hold their wings in the shape of a tent over they're backs.

Here's my great big (ugly a**) Mormon Cricket... It's a male, the ones with that giant spine on their rear are actually the females, and that's the ovipositor which they use to dig a hole in the ground to lay their eggs in. Orthoptera order, Tettigoniidae family. These are the things that go crunch under the tires of your car on your way up to Bogus Basin or Lucky Peak. =.= What, a mess..... AND, they screech when you pick them up or bug them, it's creepy! D:.... But they sure are neat XD

Here's another weird little cricket I found out in the back Asteraceae family, in the Orthoptera order.