MACRO OCTOBER IN MARLERA - Episode Seven - ON THE TWELFTH OF OCTOBER

6 months ago

The October days are still warm and the nature around me is teeming with life. Although the calendar wouldn't agree, the winter still feels far away. I spent a couple of hours in Marlera today as well, but that's a story for one of the future posts of this series. Today, I'm gonna show you what I found and photographed ten days ago, on the 12th of October 2023.

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Before continuing, I would like to say a few words that explain the word Marlera in the title. Marlera is the name of a coastal area a couple of kilometers from the village of Liznjan and about five or six kilometers from where I live. And now, let's start the insect mania.

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This thing looked like a dry fragment of some plant that somehow ended up on a leaf of fresh green grass. Only when I came closer ...

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... and took a look through the macro lens, I recognized a well-camouflaged moth.

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Today, while preparing this post, I found out on the Internet that the name of the species is Dichomeris acuminatus. This moth belongs to the Gelechiidae family. It's a widespread species that can be found practically all around the world in tropical and sub-tropical habitats. The larvae feed on a wide variety of plants that can be found in different parts of the world. Here where I live, the host plants are probably some Medicago species.

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I found some interesting leafhoppers on the 12th of October.

Photographing this partially iridescent one was the most exciting macro experience of that warm October afternoon.

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First - because I've never seen this kind of leafhopper before ...

... and second - because I get easily mesmerized by iridescence no matter the form in which appears in nature. The name of this species from the Cicadellidae family is Aconurella prolixa. Nymphs and adults feed on various grasses from the Poaceae family.

This is the Eupteryx melissae, a Cicadellidae species that already appeared in this series. In the following photograph ...

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... you can take a break from the macro view by watching the meadow at sunset.

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Hemipteran insects from the Delphacidae family are commonly known as planthoppers. They are fairly closely related to the leafhoppers. In this and the following photograph ...

... you can see the Toya propinqua, a species from the Delphacidae family. A male with long, well-developed wings, more precisely.

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This is the brachypterous female of the same species.

Brachypterous is a term used to describe an animal with short or reduced wings.

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Not only do the insects and other small arthropods look cool because they come in all kinds of shapes & colors, but there is also plenty of cool stuff one can find out about their biology and lifestyle. Macro is the closest thing to exploring a fantasy world here on Earth and in the most mundane reality.

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Here you can take another quick break from the macro view. The photograph shows a chunk of the scenery with a group of Erigeron bonariensis plants in the foreground. In the following shot ...

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... the same plants are shown from a different angle.

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Here you can see two lovely little beetles mating on the leaf of some herbaceous plant I wasn't able to identify because I forgot to photograph the entire leaf or the entire plant.

These are leaf beetles. Which means they belong to the Chrysomelidae family.

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The name of the species is Sphaeroderma testaceum. Both larvae and adults feed on leaves, especially leaves that belong to various Thistle species. In the following photograph ...

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... you can see a mating pair of a very different kind.

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Pezotettix giornae is a species that appears fairly regularly in this series. These grasshoppers are very common and numerous here where I live.

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As in quite a few other grasshoppers from the Acrididae family ...

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... the color and the markings can be more or less different from individual to individual.

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You'll certainly notice small differences if you compare all the Pezotettix giornae shown in today's post.

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This beautiful caterpillar is the larval form of the Papilio machaon, a pretty big butterfly commonly known as the Old World swallowtail. It was photographed on the Foeniculum vulgare plant on which this species often feeds at this stage of life.

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