Identify this insect - 2022

I’m curious what this insect might be. I found it on my potted satsuma mandarin. It likes to spin some kind of web on the top or bottom surface of a leaf and then presumably lay eggs and hang out underneath the web. They have wings but seem to be reluctant flyers - more inclined to scurry to the other side of the leaf when disturbed rather than fly away. There’s a lot of pollen in the air at the moment, and the pollen tends to be sprinkled over the surface of the leaves and their webs, so that’s visible in all the pictures.

Sorry, they’re so small it’s hard to get a good photo. Here’s a zoomed in shot of an adult: Screenshot 2022-05-01 22.12.42

@clarkinks I’ll take the pink spotted lady beetle, thank you!

@ncdabbler Gosh, it’s just too tiny - you did a good job trying to photograph it, though. Are you near enough to visit your local extension entomologist? You could bring them some samples with leaves in a ziploc bag. I’m grabbing at straws here, but you could look through the different Triozidae or even Psylloidea on BugGuide.

3 Likes

The ncdabbler photos contain plenty enough info for an ID. The two insect Families mentioned above have rolled/vertical wing posture more like the cidadas and have antennae that are slightly enlarged at the tips, like butterflies. The ncdabbler insect has a more flat-postured wing and thread-like antennae.

Edit: I can’t readily find it. Will have to be in a family with long threadlike antennae. It would help a lot to know if your insect has one or two pairs of wings; try to capture and refrigerate for better handling.

2 Likes

This one doesn’t seem to be a plant pest per se, but the fly on the left was stalking and seemed to be attacking this miner bee as it re-excavated its burrow (I crushed it by accident while weeding):

The miner bees seem to like my yard and I like it that way, hopefully the fly isn’t trying to parasitize them or something…

1 Like

Some kind of common tachniid fly.

What about Psocoptera?That contains booklice, barklice or barkflies.
They have wings but don’t fly,like what was mentioned earlier.
Here is a photo of a bark louse:

2 Likes

@LarryGene thanks for looking! I caught two adults and printed out a millimeter ruler to serve as a background. Here’s my best attempt with my phone camera. They definitely have two pairs of wings.

2 Likes

That’s it, Brady. It was posted in a Houzz topic several years ago and I could not remember the insect type. Thanks for the lead.

Of the Psocoptera, the ncdabbler insect most resembles an “Outer Barklouse”, family Ectopsocidae.
https://bugguide.net/node/view/141062/bgimage?from=24
They feed on a variety of decaying matter. They would not be a pest of citrus, and they may not be responsible for the other insect activity on the mandarin leaves, they would be looking for byproducts of that activity, like ants do with aphids, for example.

Thanks for the pictures of the captured specimens; the two pairs of wings rules out the huge Diptera (fly) Order that have only one pair of wings.

4 Likes

Thanks @LarryGene and @Bradybb, I appreciate your help with IDing these tiny insects! They are in such large numbers on my mandarin tree, that my first assumption was they must be a pest of some kind. I would’ve never guessed they were bark lice from many pictures of their larger cousins - glad to hear they aren’t hurting the tree.

There are many ants on my tree at the moment too, but they seem to be attracted to the flowers. I had a mite infestation on the tree over the winter, so a lot of the older leaves still show signs of that damage. Could the mites’ prior feeding leave a residue that attracts the bark lice? Or maybe they like to eat pollen? We have a nice dusting of that on everything at the moment.

1 Like

Yes, bark lice do feed on pollen.

Just learned of a bug that resembles it So if you see one with checkered wings make sure you do not kill a
whitefly predator Dicyphus hesperus
(I may buy some of these for indoors , but it is $75 for a population
note other sites may be cheaper, but those sites are not listing there prices)

https://bugguide.net/node/view/245521/bgimage

1 Like

20220617_153104

Noticed this odd leaf curl on my persimmon seedlings… on just a few leaves.

Rolled that curl out and found a bunch of these very small insects in there…

I took a small brush and swept out all I could find and gave them some seven spray…

Hope that does it.

Any idea what that is ? Some kind of sap sucking critter I suppose… just b4 I took that picture he or she was wiggling his or her behind back and fourth…

Picture then smash and in the trash.

@TNHunter

I have them here, don’t think they really cause much trouble .
Syrphid flys are their natural predator , so keeping flowers around
That attracts syrphid flys should help .
.

Thanks @Hillbillyhort - good to know what it is called.

I noticed that leaf curl about a week or two ago and I thought it was something odd caused by the extreme heat we have been having… but today I noticed that the newer leaves that came out above those looked normal (and it has still been very hot) and just those few below had that. So I started inspecting it more and found those critters. I gave them a hard time with a brush and seven spray… hope I did them all in.

I’ve been picking these out of my rhubarb blossoms and thought I’d like to know what they are. But trying to ID a “black beetle” online is a needle-in-a-haystack search. I think I’ve seen photos on GF to something similar but didn’t know what to search for so here I am with my question photo. I thought they were the same that I earlier had picked out of my aronia blossoms but looking closer at the photo they are similar type but not the same (aronia’s were more pattenred black/gray or browns). (I didn’t think to take a photo of them). Sue

rhubarb-flower-beetles-gf

1 Like

Maybe some kind of leaf beetle, Cryptocephalus fulguratus.There are quite a few in the Chrysomelidae family.Over 37,000 species,if that is what they are.

The beetles above lack the long antennae of the proposed leaf beetle.

Your beetles are scarabs, probably one of the fruit and flower chafers.
I will look for a species ID as time allows. But habits and control will be the same for any chafer beetle.

All scarab beetles, regardless of size, are built like tanks and have short, comb-like antennae, I think one antenna is visible in the left-most beetle, above. The rest of the antennas are held too close to the body to see.

2 Likes

I could not find a good match in the Chafers, but in the May Beetle and June Bugs (these are scarabs), this is a good match:

https://bugguide.net/node/view/12916/bgimage

The range and size are correct (see Info and Data tabs on the above linked page)

Also, for this genus, there are black males and brown females, like your photo.

If numerous, these would be a pest insect.

2 Likes

@LarryGene thanks so much! I’d tried about every combination of words I could think of when searching for an ID, but didn’t think of Chafer. And I couldn’t find anything even closely related to either aronia or rhubarb so maybe they aren’t specific to those flowers. I’m pretty tolerant of insects but my aronia flowers were full of them and I guessed that wasn’t a good thing. Several pickings several days apart took care of them. Same with the rhubarb. Now that I have a good direction I’ll read up more about them in general. I’d seen them here and there in years past but never so many all at once. In looking closer at the rhubarb ones I think they are the same as were in the aronia. Sue