June 14th, 2006
silver eggs
This morning, I had been planning to post some more photos from last Sunday’s hike at Murphy’s Point Provincial Park. However, something came along and bopped the dragonflies out of the way. Yesterday afternoon, while walking in the meadows here at the farm, I came upon these weird little spiny silver eggs atop a Common Milkweed leaf (click on image to see larger view). I must confess that they were so very small that I had no idea that they had crown-like spines until I had a look at them on my computer screen. Once enlarged, they looked so bizarre that I actually started to laugh. They reminded me more of something out of a sci-fi movie than the kind of thing one might find on a milkweed leaf in a meadow. Of course, I had no idea what they might be. They didn’t resemble any of the butterfly eggs that I’m familiar with. However, yesterday was a busy day for me, so I didn’t have time to look around for a possible ID.
Last night, I got to wondering about the eggs again, and posted a note about them to a regional nature listserv to which I belong. One of the other members recalled having read that stink bug or shield bug eggs had a circle of spines. That set me off looking around for stink bug egg photos on Google. It seemed that most of the stink bugs have typical rounded or barrel-shaped eggs, but then I found a page with photos of eggs of the Spiny Soldier Bug, et voila… a match.
Spiny Soldier Bugs, also known as Spiny Stink Bugs, are the predatory members of the Pentatomidae Family which includes all Stink Bugs. While many species of Stink Bugs feed on plants, a number of them (mainly species of Podisus and Brochymena) use their pointed proboscis to stab and feed on the body fluids of insects (as illustrated in the gory photo above). The plant feeding Stink Bugs can usually be distinguished from their predatory kin by their lack of humeral spines (sharply pointed “shoulders”). Also, many predatory Stink Bugs have decidedly armor-like appearance compared to the smoothly rounded appearance of the plant feeders. By the way, I photographed the above Spiny Stink Beetle while it was feeding on an insect larva yesterday afternoon – I believe the little black larva was that of a Trirhabda Beetle. I’m seeing huge number of the predatory Stink Bugs around the meadows — which is probably not such a bad thing as there are immense numbers of Trirhabda Beetle larvae eating the leaves of the goldenrod plants absolutely ragged. It seems that the insect world always finds its own way to enforce balance.
Tags: silver eggs with spines, Spiny Stink Bug, Spiny Soldier Bug, Podisus, predatory stink bug, Trirhabda Beetles