Ants are harvesting my okra blossoms and pods... as in they destroy anything that attempts to grow. Those few pods that do escape their fiery feast grow all gnarled and curvy. Tomorrow I will be sprinkling a dash of powdery death upon them. I have no idea what that flying insect in the top picture is, but I was impressed that my camera gave me such a crisp image. Who knew bugs were that hairy?
The top insect is a robber fly, a predatory dipteran that hunts by scanning from a perch and then flying out to tackle and kill airborne targets up to its own size. It has a powerful bite (as one of my undergrads found out when she netted one) and appears to feed by liquefying the insides of its prey and then sucking them up. They are one of the most important arthropod predators of grasshoppers, and I've got some lovely pictures of robber flies from my field sites.
ReplyDeleteThanks! I told Joe right after I posted this, "I bet Eric knows what this is."
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