INVERTEBRATE ALERT
This blog provides an informal forum for terrestrial invertebrate watchers to post recent sightings of interesting observations in the southern Vancouver Island region. Please send your sightings by email to Jeremy Tatum (tatumjb352@gmail.com). Be sure to include your name, phone number, the species name (common or scientific) of the invertebrate you saw, location, date, and number of individuals. If you have a photograph you are willing to share, please send it along. Click on the title above for an index of past sightings.The index is updated most days.

September 26

2015 September 26

In case you are wondering if your computer missed a beat, no it didn’t – there wasn’t a September 25 posting.

On September 24 I reported a sighting of Autographa californica nectaring “in classical plusiine style”.  In case any viewer is wondering what than means, Devon Parker photographed his own Autographa californica nectaring “in classical plusiine style” on his lemon tree yesterday.  See that haustellum probing for nectar!  [An elephant has a proboscis; a moth has a haustellum.  (But in ordinary conversation, proboscis is just fine!)]

Autographa californica (Lep.: Noctuidae)  Devon Parker

  Rosemary Jorna writes:  Literally thousands of these impossibly small bugs flew out of the Salal this morning when we were clearing a trail in Otter Point this morning.  They only seemed to be on the Salal.   [Jeremy Tatum writes:  This is the first image we’ve had of these bugs on this site.  There are hundreds of species, so I shan’t attempt an exact identification.]

Whitefly (Hem.: Aleyrodidae)  Rosemary Jorna