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.

2022 August 29

2022 August 29

    Jeremy Tatum writes:  Shortly before ecdysis (skin-change from one instar to the next) the caterpillar of a butterfly or moth typically appears “two-headed”.  The head of the “new” caterpillar is withdrawn into the thoracic area of the “old” skin.  The first (foremost) head that you can see is the now-empty head capsule of the “old” caterpillar.  Behind this you can see the head of the “new” caterpillar inside the ”old” skin.  We see in the photograph the “double-head” of an eyed hawk moth caterpillar shortly going to change from fourth instar to fifth.

Smerinthus ophthalmica (Lep.: Sphingidae)  Jeremy Tatum

   Cheryl Hoyle sends photographs of two leafhoppers and a presumed leafhopper nymph from View Royal, August 28.

Blue-green Sharpshooter Hordnia atropunctata (Hem.:  Cicadellidae)  Cheryl Hoyle

 

 

Rhododendron Leafhopper Graphocephala fennahi (Hem.: Cicadellidae)  Cheryl Hoyle

Presumed leafhopper nymph (Hem.: Cicadellidae)  Cheryl Hoyle

   Aziza Cooper sends photographs of a butterfly and a dragonfly from Swan Lake, August 28:

   Woodland Skipper Ochlodes sylvanoides (Lep.: Hesperiidae)  Aziza Cooper

 

Blue-eyed Darner Rhionaeschna multicolor (Odo.: Aeshnidae)  Aziza Cooper

   Ian Cooper photographed these two spiders in the middle of the night (August 27/28) at Colquitz Creek Park.  We thank Dr Robb Bennett for confirming Ian’s accurate identifications.  Of the first, Dr Bennett writes:  This is a clubionid, a species of Clubiona. There are quite a few species in BC but I suspect this one is the introduced species Clubiona lutescens.

Clubiona (probably lutescens) (Ara.: Clubionidae)  Ian Cooper

 

Immature Callobius pictus (Ara.: Amaurobiidae)  Ian Cooper

Harvestman (identification uncertain) (Opiliones)  Ian Cooper

   We thank Claudia Copley for confirming Ian’s identification of the camel cricket below.

Camel cricket Pristoceuthophilus sp. (Orth.: Rhaphidophoridae)  Ian Cooper

   Just before presstime, we heard from Jeremy Gatten that he had seen a Swift Forktail yesterday by the Vancouver Island Trout Hatchery close to the Cowichan River in Duncan.  In case anyone is wondering, that’s a damselfly, Ischnura erratica.