The Urban Pantheist

This lupine bug Megalotomus quinquespinosus* is trying to trick me by sitting on a milkweed plant, instead of any legume. Normally this bug sticks its beaklike mouth into the seeds of lupines, soybeans, and others. Thinking back on it, the only conspicuous legumes around were honey locust trees. Sources also list sumac (a non-legume) as a host plant, and there is plenty of that in the highly-disturbed, partially paved area where I found this bug.

Apparently this plant eating bug benefits from its passing resemblance to the predatory assassin bugs. I presume that the distinctive white band on its antennae signals this misapprehension.



*Best as I can tell, Megalotomus means "big section" referring to the broad head of this insect; Quinquespinosus means "5 spines."

I like to joke that this animal's natural habitat is the window screen. The mundane truth is that they get themselves inside through small cracks to hide from the cold, then try to exit through the bright light of a solid window or screen. This creature's actual natural habitat is the conifer forests of western North America--so what the hell is it doing in Boston?


For whatever reason, the western conifer seed bug Leptoglossis occidentalis* spent the 20th century drifting across to the east coast. For at least ten or fifteen years I've been telling people about it. It catches people's attention because it suddenly appears inside, or they see it flying around in a dismayingly wasplike manner, or they notice that it produces a defensive odor. I personally like the odor, finding it close to sour apple smell--it actually contains compounds that are synthesized by the food industry for flavorings. In all other ways the WCSB is utterly harmless, not biting nor causing agricultural damage. A relative newcomer that still sometimes surprises.


*Thin-tongued westerner

Little brown jobs--naturalist talk for smallish, dull-colored, hard to identify organisms--often have no common name. The fact that this one has even the lackluster name of "brown stink bug," means that it has some reason to draw attention to itself. That reason is economic damage. This unassuming insect combines a broad appetite with an impressive reproductive capacity. The result is that Euschistus servus* is known to people who make money from growing food plants, because it ruins them. Besides "catfacing" peaches and putting spots on pecans, brown stink bugs also "may damage soybean, corn, cotton, alfalfa, sorghum, ... and tobacco." This one was probably helping itself to our raspberries. I fed it to the chickens.

* "Euschistus"= New Latin, from Greek euschistos easy to split, from eu- + schistos split, divided. I assume this is a taxonomy joke, about the reassignment of the genus and splitting of species, but that's just a guess. "Servus" literally means "At your service!" but has the sense of "slave."