meeyauw: My Jagged Ambush Bugs Are Yellow

Mating Jagged Ambush Bugs (Phymata)
on John's finger.

I've probably put too many photos of jagged ambush bugs in this post, but that's because they are a prize when you try to photograph insects. The Twitter photographers all remind people that the season for them has opened when goldenrod blooms. Like we need a reminder? We don't. We are all waiting. They are nearly invisible to see because they are tiny, barely move, and they can change color. I've seen green, brown, and yellow. I've read of red, white, and black ones, and I'd love to find those but I doubt I ever will. I have few red wildflowers here. I seem to find the yellow ones. Jody seems to find the green ones. Why? It may be that my flowers (wild) are mostly yellow: goldenrod, black-eyed susan, fleabanes. But Jody's are cultivated flowers that are in all colors.

Mating Jagged Ambush Bugs (Phymata)
on John's finger.

I did find this about colors on the ambush beetles the article "Ambush bugs match their habitat using choice and colour change" at Functional Ecology:

In our study, we surveyed whether ambush bugs found in the wild tended to match the flower color they were found on, and if this was correlated with how often they had prey. In lab experiments, we followed up by providing ambush bugs a choice between yellow and white flowers, as well as keeping individuals on white and yellow backgrounds to see if they would change colour over time. We found that in the wild, ambush bugs were whiter on white flowers and yellower on yellow flowers, and that better matched individuals were found more often with prey. All ambush bugs in the lab preferred yellow flowers, but this preference was especially strong for individuals who were found on yellow flowers in the wild. Finally, we found the first experimental evidence for color change in this species; ambush bugs were able to become more yellow over time but not whiter, and this was exaggerated when they were kept on a yellow background.

We now know that ambush bugs use a combination of color change and choice of habitat to optimize their ability to catch unsuspecting prey. Overall, this study improves our knowledge of how background matching is achieved in organisms using a combination of complex mechanisms.

Mating Jagged Ambush Bugs (Phymata)
on John's finger.

John, my late husband, would touch anything. Brave or foolhardy? I vote for brave. He held the mating pair of ambush bugs for me because they kept wandering out of the tripod-based viewfinder and he could keep them still. They will bite, but he figured they were too busy. 😉 We always called these shots bug porn.

Jagged Ambush Bugs (Phymata)

But I do photograph them in the wild without human aid. These bugs sit on flowers and wait for prey to come to them. They don't really move and hunt. So if you can see them, they can be fun to photograph for hundreds of focused shots. They use those fat front legs to hold on to prey, inject it with a venom that paralyzes it and then sucks its insides out. Ouch. 💀 Poor bugs.

Jagged Ambush Bugs (Phymata)

The males are much smaller than the females.

Jagged Ambush Bugs (Phymata)

Some people keep ambush bugs as pets. I really have to suggest this to Jody. After all, we have raised, separately and together, flea beetles, lady beetles, moths, and butterflies. Why not some ambush bugs?

Jagged Ambush Bugs (Phymata)

Try to find some ambush bugs next summer. Or assassin bugs (but they run after prey so are more difficult to shoot). They are related. Or not. Entomologists disagree, but are usually in the same family. There are at least two species in Phymata that cannot be differentiated in photos.