BUGS THAT LOVE! the Amazing Western Conifer Seed Bug (& Shield Bugs Too!) by Lori-Michele

Author:Lori-Michele
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Lori-Michele
Published: 2020-03-15T00:00:00+00:00

The baby Wester conifer continues to emerge further out of his exoskeleton and leave the skin behind.

As the baby Western conifer finishes molting, he fully steps out and away from the old black skin; then joins the others, as he too will begin to darken in color, as the time passes. Notice how the one who molted first, (the second one in the photo to the far right), is darker than the rest.

The baby Western conifers a few days later, after molting.

As they get bigger, they will molt four more times, after the initial molt. They only problem is, that at any one of these stages they can die from it. One got stuck in its old skin and couldn’t get its head out. Although I tried to assist, it was too hard and difficult to figure out where the old skin and new body began and too risky to tear at any of it.

Others have a difficult time getting their feet out of the skins. I helped this situation a couple of times by putting some water by cotton swab, on the old skin, so it would slip off better.

Yet, another weird thing happens, which is at any of these molting stages, they can be total perfect and fine in one stage and when they molt again, become deformed in the next. For example, one had perfectly normal feel and legs, yet when it molted, it had ‘bent knees’ and extra long feet. Another one was totally normal before the molting and after, all it’s stylets were out of the drinking straw. One of the stylets was short and bent backwards, another was long and wavy, another was curled and the other was bent and twisted. The bug tried endlessly to get them straight and back into the drinking straw, but couldn’t. Sometimes, when they are deformed after a molting, they will die soon, yet this one lived for quite a while before it did eventually pass.

Baby Western conifers at one month old, drinking from a plastic gallon water bottle cap.

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