Russian Bugs

When I visited Russia for the first time in 2005, there was only one insect that I really wanted to see - the peacock butterfly.   Although it's found throughout Europe, I figured that my chances of actually seeing it in Russia, let alone photographing it, were minimal.   It turns out that I didn't need to be so pessimistic, they were fairly common and I saw them in several places, including quite a few in the Kremlin gardens in Moscow.   This one is within the walls of the monastery of St Jacob in the "Golden Ring" town of Rostov Veliky, about 200 kilometers north-east of Moscow.

This comma butterfly certainly isn't as impressive as the peacock, but it's attractive in its own way.

The comma gets its common name, and its scientific name Polygonia comma, from the white mark you can see on the outside of its hind wing; there's another similar looking butterfly called the question mark which really does have a question mark shape on its wing, thereby earning its scientific name Polygonia interrogationis.

The dark brown and ragged wings allow the comma to hide away in the dappled light of the forest, but the topsides of the wings are fairly attractive.

Another butterfly from the monastery of St Jacob, this time a small tortoiseshell.

Small tortoiseshells are one of those hardy breeds of butterfly which are well suited to the harsh Russian climate.   Some overwinter, and so they're often the first butterflies to re-appear in spring.

Like commas, the males of this species are territorial and will fight off other butterflies and insects which enter their space, however they usually only defend a patch of ground for about an hour; if a female hasn't arrived by that time, a male will move on to somewhere else.

Caterpillars are often more spectacular than the moth or butterfly that they turn into, and that's certainly the case with this little critter, which is the larva of the grey dagger moth (Acronicta psi).   It took me quite a bit of searching in the trees just outside the front gate of the Russian air force museum at Monino to find it, but I think the time was well spent.

Most caterpillars never make it to adulthood, because they end up parasitized by wasps, flies or other insects.

Here's a wasp on a very reflective area of limestone which has captured a caterpillar and is dragging it away to bury it, at which time it'll lay one or more eggs on the paralyzed but still-living prey.

The wasp was pretty annoyed that I was hanging around photographing it, I'm probably lucky that it didn't also sting me and drag me away to bury with some of its eggs.

This is a 22-spot ladybird beetle, which has the almost impossible to remember Latin name Psyllobora vigintiduopunctata, which leads many people to naughtily refer to it as Psyllobora 22-punctata.

In case you're getting a bit confused from counting the number of spots on this ladybird beetle, here's a hint:  only the eleven spots on each wing count towards the final total!

Another yellow and black insect, but this time it's not a ladybird beetle, in fact it's not any sort of beetle, it's a "true bug".

Many people refer to ladybird beetles as ladybird bugs, but actually beetles and bugs are two different things, in spite of the common English usage (which I've even employed at the top of this page) of referring to all creepy-crawlies as "bugs".   If I was being really correct then I would have called this the "Russian arthropod page" as I've done elsewhere, but sometimes it's necessary to sacrifice correctness for clarity!

Beetles belong to the order Coleoptera, which contains about a third of all insects, which is why someone once said that "God is inordinately fond of beetles".   Coleoptera means "sheath wings", so named because the front pair of wings has developed into hard covers called "elytra", which cover the membranous hind wings used for flying.

The true bugs belong to the order Hemiptera, which means "half wings" and refers to the fact that the front pair of wings is half hard like beetles and half membranous.   Another major difference is that a beetle's elytra usually meet together in a straight line right down the middle of their back, whereas true bugs often have a criss-cross arrangement.

This poor bug probably doesn't care too much about these distinctions, it's probably more concerned about the bright red mite (an eight-legged arachnid like spiders) sitting on its back and sucking its juices out.

Here's a bug and a beetle together in the same photo, illustrating another very important difference between the two orders.

True bugs all possess a "rostrum" which they use to eat, consisting of a long tube which is usually folded up underneath the bug's head and body.   In this case, though, a predaceous bug has stuck its rostrum into a beetle, something the beetle probably isn't enjoying too much.

The bug eating a beetle, the yellow bug in the previous photo and the bug in this photo all belong to a group called "shield" bugs (or, more commonly, "stink" bugs).   They got this name from the shape of their bodies, which looks somewhat like a Roman shield.

The protusions at the top of this beetle's shield look particularly pointy, which probably makes the beetle rather hard for a bird to swallow.

Being eaten is likely to be an unpleasant experience for another reason, too - they're not called "stink" beetles for nothing!

Another feature to notice is the "scutellum", the fixed triangular plate in the middle of their backs, between their wings.   All true bugs have a scutellum, and it's particularly prominent on shield bugs.

True bugs can be very attractive, but they'll never challenge the beauty of butterflies, at least in the eyes of the general public.   However dragonflies are probably a close runner up to butterflies in the beauty stakes.   I captured this bright red one outside the Zhukovsky airfield near Moscow, while photographing Russian military aircraft at the 2005 MAKS airshow.

These critters are nice to look at from a distance, and fascinating when viewed up close.

I suspect that this is a juvenile of the same species as the previous three individuals.   It won't get any larger but as it develops the red coloration on its back will spread, and the stigmata might change color too.

Here's a different species belonging to a different family than the previous ones.

In America this family is known as darners because of the resemblance of their bodies to a darning needle, but in Europe they're called hawkers because of their style of hunting.   Dragonflies in this family have large bodies but slender tails, and their eyes meet in an extended seam, rather than just touching together briefly like the dragonflies in the previous photos.

This one belongs to a species called the "migrant hawker" and this individual is probably a female, identifiable by the "blades" at the end of the tail which are used to make cuts in the skin of underwater plants, into which the eggs are laid.

There were plenty of grasshoppers and crickets at Gelendzhik too, like this individual with orange legs and abdomen.

Unlike that wasp, this grasshopper was so unconcerned by my extremely close presence that it even decided to keep munching on this blade of grass, rather than jumping or flying away.

Grasshoppers have relatively short antennae with fewer than 30 segments, but crickets like this one have longer antennae.   In both cases there are six stages of development from the newly hatched juvenile to the adult.   The undeveloped wing buds on the back of this one shows that it isn't yet an adult.

In spite of the differences in coloration, I suspect that this is an even less developed nymph of the same species as the previous photo.

Look closely and you'll see that it's also picked up one of those bright red mites, which is probably too small to cause serious harm to its host.

We've covered butterflies, dragonflies, beetles, bugs, grasshoppers and crickets, so it should be pretty obvious that we're starting to scrap the bottom of the barrel as far as ratings in the human popularity poll are concerned.

This is a bug belong to an order of insects called the scorpionflies, and this is the first one I've ever seen anywhere in the world.   They're a much older family than even butterflies or moths, first appearing about 250 million years ago.

Scorpionflies are very recognizable from the shape of their head, but this family gets its name because the males of some species have abdomens which curl upwards and forwards, like the stinger of a scorpion.   In fact, they are harmless and eat soft fruit and dead insects.

OK, so you weren't convinced when I said that the tachinid fly is both attractive and useful, were you?

Here's the final group of critters then, and just to make you happy, it's something which eats flies.   One entymologist even claimed that if it weren't for spiders we'd all soon be knee deep in flies, which isn't an exaggeration, because flies can lay huge numbers of eggs and those eggs develop into breeding adults very rapidly.

I was very surprised to see this spider in Russia, because it looks almost exactly like a shamrock spider I've seen in the United States.   It seemed strange to see the same spider in both places, particularly considering it's the type of spider which would rather hide inside a curled leaf than walk to the other side of the planet.

However, it turns out that it's a different member of the genus Araneus, this one's scientific name is Araneus diadematus, but it's so common that it's usually called the "garden spider", or sometimes the "cross spider" because of the white cross-shaped mark at the front of its abdomen.