These little insects, photographed in their natural environment habitats, among trees and leaves, demonstrate that they are not easy prey for predators.
Paul Bertner, a 31-year-old forester and photographer from Canada, decided to find and photograph insects and their homes.
He considers this process a kind of game of hide and seek.
His goal was to show how much biodiversity there is in nature.
Insects and the world around them
The Canadian forester admits that finding the beetle in its natural environment is incredibly difficult and requires special skills to do so without spooking the insect.
Using macro photography, he was able to get close enough to some of the insects to capture them against a backdrop of trees and foliage.
Paul Burtner has been a professional photographer for about 5 years. For his work, he used two Canon 5D mark III cameras and a Canon MPE-65mm lens for close-up shooting.
Where are the insects?
This photo shows a cicada on a leaf. It looks transparent, but this is just an optical illusion.
Shown here is the mantis Gyromantis kraussii, whose brown, gray and black colors blend almost perfectly with the color of the tree on which it rests.
It is almost impossible to find the light brown Brookesia minor, a species of chameleon lizard, in this photo.
Find the insect in the photo
On the left is another representative of the praying mantis - deroplatys desiccata, hanging on a tree branch, and on the right is a real grasshopper resting on a tree.
The praying mantis, from the family liturgusidae, uses its brown-red coloration to remain undetected in a tree.
Green insect
An insect from the flatidae family blends perfectly into the green background, remaining almost invisible.
Although you can see a dragonfly in the upper right corner, there is another insect from the order Ghostfly (also called stick insects or leaf beetles) in this image.
Here you can see a beetle from the curculionoid family. The surface of its back imitates the ground covered with grass, which allows the beetle to hide well.
Painting insects under a dry leaf
Climbing on branches, this Henkel's flat-tailed gecko looks very much like a dried leaf, and is incredibly difficult to see in the wild.
On the left there is a real grasshopper hiding on the leaf, and on the right there is a Darwin spider, which has adapted to the brown background and managed to hide.
On the left is a picture of the insect kallima inachus, and on the right is a mantis deroplatys desiccata. As a rule, both insects hide on dry leaves, where they are practically invisible.
Well, there are a lot of unusual living creatures in the tropics! Well, the climate here is warm and humid, there are more than enough plants, so those who eat greens are bred. And behind them come those who don’t mind running for their own lunch. Birds, insects, fish and animals - they are all busy with something. For example, they catch up with their breakfast, not suspecting that they themselves will soon become someone’s dinner.
Although no, they suspect. Otherwise, why would they come up with so many ways to outwit predators? However, the leaf beetle surpassed them all! This large insect from the order ghostly is so reminiscent of an inconspicuous, withered leaf that it is practically no different from it. You take such a leaf in your hands, but - raaaaz - and it runs away. It doesn’t take long for you to start stuttering...
Leaf-bodies or leaf-bearing plants (lat. Phylliidae) is a whole family of insects that are common in the tropical zone of Southeast Asia, on the islands of Melanesia and in northeastern Australia.
Their maximum size is 12.5 cm. The body is wide and flattened in females, elongated and long in males. The legs imitate small leaves: they are slightly expanded, leaf-shaped. Females have no back pair of wings, so they cannot fly. They move slowly, freezing for a long time on branches or on leaf petioles.
But males fly beautifully, they are very mobile and are even capable of autonomy (throwing away part of the body when in danger). They are not so leaf-like: their elytra are shortened and dense. The body color of leafhoppers not only harmonizes with the surrounding foliage, it literally merges with it. Females even have small and thin veins on their elytra that imitate the veining of plants.
Today there are 4 genera in the leaf beetle family, which include 51 species. However, the most interesting thing is that over the 47 million years of their existence on our planet, they have practically not changed. Apparently, such a disguise is already ideal, so why change anything?
Scientists searching for fossil remains discovered this quite recently. Although it is quite possible that they had come across such insects before, and they mistook them for ordinary leaves. Safely hidden, cunning ones.
Leaf beetles reproduce by laying eggs. Their larvae do not look like leaves at all, but they have a reliable, protective coloring that allows them to hide from enemies.
These insects feed on plants, gnawing them using their forward-directed, gnawing mouthparts. Their activity is directly opposite to that of their enemies. For example, in hot climates, where the afternoon heat forces all inhabitants of the tropics to lie down in the shade, leaf beetles are active during the day, and stand motionless in the morning, evening and night. If in their habitat predators look for victims during the day, then leaf beetles are active at night.
Very often, leafhoppers hang under a branch or under the petiole of a leaf, clinging to it with only two legs. At the same time, they slowly turn their body from side to side, depicting a leaf hanging on a thin thread, which sways with a light breeze. “I’m a leaf, a leaf, a leaf, I’m not lunch at all...”
The Java leaf beetle is one of the most unusual insects in the world, which surprises with its shape and protective coloring.
Javan leaf beetles belong to, they are common in the tropical forests of India, Mauritania, Borneo, Sri Lanka, Malacca, Java and Sumatra.
Appearance of the Java leaf moth
The body length of an adult female Java leaf moth is 7 centimeters, while males do not exceed 5 centimeters in length.
A distinctive feature of the Javan leaf beetle, in comparison with other representatives of the genus, are 2 small spots on the abdomen of a brown color with red specks. Due to the wide elytra, these insects look like leaves.
The camouflage of the Javan leaf beetle is simply amazing; in the greenery it is practically unnoticeable. This camouflage is explained by the fact that these insects are completely defenseless against predators: they are sedentary, non-aggressive and non-poisonous.
Adult females have wings, but they do not use wings. Males have a less wide abdomen and longer wings that cover the abdomen. The antennae of males are also several times longer than those of females.
Keeping Javanese leafhoppers at home
These insects are kept in ordinary vertical insectariums, which must be provided with good ventilation.
Javanese leafhoppers are kept at a temperature of 24-26 degrees, and for a comfortable life they need lighting for 8-10 hours, preferably with natural light.
Feeding leafhoppers
Java leaf beetles are fed with raspberry, oak and blackberry leaves; they can also be given strawberry, guava, and privet leaves.
It should be borne in mind that young leaf beetles prefer tender parts of plants, but they should not be given leaves that have just opened from the buds, since they contain substances that are poisonous to insects.
You can’t feed the leafhoppers with dried leaves, so you’ll have to solve the issue of winter food: you’ll need to plant indoor strawberry bushes and germinate oak trees from acorns. It must be taken into account that with a sudden change of food, the insect may die, so the leaf beetles are gradually accustomed to the new food.
Breeding Java Leafweeds
In insectariums, the parthenogenetic form is usually common, which means that females lay unfertilized eggs, and females hatch again after 4-6 months.
Newborn individuals have a red-brown color. Their body is wide and flat, so they disguise themselves as small leaves.
This species of stick insect was imported from West Malaysia and has now been freely bred at home for several decades. It is no coincidence that the stick insect (Phyllium bioculatum) is one of the most popular species that can be kept at home in insectariums. The females look like beautiful leaves, they are magnificent, although these insects are perfectly camouflaged among the foliage and are very difficult to see. Stick insects of this species are not poisonous, not aggressive, and are very inactive, so camouflage is their only way to protect themselves from predators. The bodies of leafhoppers can be different color, from light green to red-brown. There are individuals of yellow, brick, rusty pink, light green, green with tan marks and spots of different shades.
The size of female stick insects varies from 80 - 95 mm in length and 40 - 50 mm in width. Unlike other species, female leaf beetles have a well-developed pair of fore wings, which they never use for their intended purpose. There are always more males, their abdomen is much narrower than that of females, and they are smaller in size - about 60 mm. The fore and hind wings of these insects are well developed and they can fly. Green color acquired during the first week, after the final molt. With age they turn golden. Males are often very active and difficult to handle; they constantly try to fly away, and when trying to catch them, they easily lose their legs. They transform into adult (sexually mature) insects within 5 months; in females this process lasts a little longer and takes about 6 months.
Since males mature faster and their lives are quite short, many of them are not available for mating. After all, females do not even have time to mature by this time. Therefore, for breeding stick insects, it is better to have several individuals of different ages. How long do stick insects of this species live? Leaf insects live from several weeks to several months, but if you learn how to reproduce them, then the successive stick insects of this species will delight you for a long time. At least, caring for them is not as difficult as for those who also live very little.
The fertilized female will have a pouch in the genital area for a short time. After successful mating, females lay over 300 eggs throughout their lives, with an average of 2 - 3 eggs per day. The eggs vary in color from light to dark brown and are seed-like, with five ridges, measuring about 9 x 5 mm. The incubation period of an insect on wet sand at temperature conditions(23 - 28 ° C) is about 5 months.
Keeping stick insects will not be difficult if they are placed in a spacious and large insectarium with fresh leaves. Suitable foods for the leaf beetle include oak, raspberry or blackberry leaves. Young stick insects prefer tender parts of plants, but it is not recommended to feed them leaves that have just opened from the buds, as they contain substances that are poisonous to insects.
Stick insect photo: Chun Xing Wong
Here is the first representative“ “: a careful examination of the plant sometimes leads to an unexpected result: the revived “branches” leave the previously occupied place and hide in the dense foliage.
photo:geart1
This type of mantis ( very similar to dry leaves. This type of camouflage not only helps to hide oneself from predators, but also to be undetected while hunting.
photo: mnn.com
Butterfly - dry leaf ( just like the praying mantis, it is very similar to a dry leaf, which 100% saves it from.
This grasshopper's camouflage is so precise that it even imitates the spots on a leaf.
photo: David W. Leindecker
Some of the strangest inhabitants on the planet. When one of these amazing creatures is resting on a branch or at the end of a tree branch, they are almost impossible to spot.
Orchid mantis (lat. Hymenopus coronatus) . These predators look bright and very beautiful, but in reality they are ruthless killers. They use a species that mimics a petal to make themselves invisible to their prey.
photo: Nandini Velho
These insects are classified as stick insects, and as their name suggests, they have evolved to mimic leaves rather than sticks.
photo: Henrik Larsson
Moths, or surveyors (Geometridae). During the Industrial Revolution, there was only one color variety of the birch moth in Britain. White butterflies with small dark spots on their wings perfectly imitated the color of the birch bark covered with lichens, on which they rested during the day, and thanks to this they were hardly noticeable.
Acanthaspis PETAX photo: eddy lee
Acanthaspis PETAX is a type of bug that preys on ants. It is unique in that this species uses ant carcasses to conceal itself from predators.
