What will hatch? - The Mystery of the Golden Eggs

fisheyeadventures · Post by **fisheyeadventures** » Sat Jun 29, 2019 1:58 pm

Hey everyone!
The last week, I found several very interesting golden Eggs in my garden. I started taking macro photos of them to see what will hatch. Therefor I used my 90mm macro lens and extension tubes, because
they were very very small. The longer I took images, the more I learned.
It was really an amazing week, watching those tiny, beautiful beetles growing and on the other hand learning a lot of the cruelty of nature... Have you ever found some of these eggs? Or some similar ones and watched how they evolved?
You can watch the whole story here:
https://youtu.be/7OK0zVIqvhM

Lou Jost · Post by **Lou Jost** » Sat Jun 29, 2019 2:42 pm

Very nice video. Note that these are not beetles though. Beetles are like butterflies, when they hatch they are elongated soft caterpillar-like creatures. They go through metamophosis to turn into adult beetles.

These are Hemiptera. sucking insects that pierce they food and suck it. Most of them suck the juices of live plants under pressure. They won't generally be able to eat most of that stuff you gave them.

fisheyeadventures · Post by **fisheyeadventures** » Sun Jun 30, 2019 1:37 am

Thank you for the information! I was jsut really confused, because stink bugs for example eat fruit, but water melon was not interesting for them.

MarkSturtevant · Post by **MarkSturtevant** » Mon Jul 15, 2019 7:17 pm

Very nicely done video. It was fun to watch you work out the answers to your various questions! I really enjoyed it.
Both sets of eggs are Hemipteran eggs, and these barrel-shaped type eggs with a "lid" on top seem to be laid by several different but related families that all belong to the superfamily Pentatomoidea. It seems that all species in this superfamily pretty much "look" like stink bugs, but they will differ in various features like the number of tarsal segments on their feet, or the form of the triangular scutellum plate that is on their back. Here is a link that goes through their classification, if you would like to peruse it: https://bugguide.net/node/view/360658/tree

The metallic color of the first set of eggs is probably a character of that species. Many other Hemipteran eggs are metallic.
Not all of these stink-bug-like insects are plant suckers. There are many species that are predators, and they are surprisingly 'good' at preying on insects much larger than themselves. This is surprising to me since they never move very quickly.
After hatching, they will not need to eat for a time because they can subsist on the yolk that remains in their gut. Their bright colors are a warning that they are toxic and/or smell bad, and by aggregating they can put on a stronger defense for a time.

fisheyeadventures · Post by **fisheyeadventures** » Thu Aug 01, 2019 5:42 am

Wow, thank you for all the information!:)