May 28th, 2006
it came from mars
Well, no… actually, it came from Murphys Point Provincial Park. But it looks like it could have come from Mars, or perhaps escaped from a top-secret compound near Roswell.
I found it while hiking in the woods near McParlan House in mid-July 2004. My first impression was that it was a very odd looking creature — the invertebrate world’s answer to Rodin’s “Thinker”, clinging pensively to a small sapling at the edge of the trail. It remained quite motionless while I shot a few photos, but then moved its head around a bit and curled its tail a little tighter. I wasn’t quite sure what it might be — a larva of some sort — but it was so large that I decided to stick it in my Caterpillars gallery on Pbase, for lack of anywhere better to keep it while awaiting an ID. There it languished for quite some time before I noticed a photo of a Cimbex sawfly larva in the “Not Quite Caterpillars” section on page 12 of David L. Wagner’s “Caterpillars of Eastern North America.” At last, I could put a name to this face.
So, why dust off this photo and post it today?
This morning, I posted a photo of a large, black, bee-like insect encountered earlier this week. Turns out that the insect in this morning’s post is some kind of Cimbicidae – probably a species of Cimbex — so its the adult form of a larva much like the weird little yellow creature in the above photo. Oddly enough, I don’t think I ever contemplated what the Cimbex larva might become in later life. Usually, I ponder such things, but I’m quite sure that, in this case, I never gave the question much thought – until today. All of which brings me back around to the point I so often make about the world of insects — that there’s so much to learn, that each time you go out to the field, you almost always come home with some new bit of knowledge and another piece or two for one of the puzzles that you’re working on.
Tags: Cimbex, Cimbex americana, Elm Sawfly