United States or Australia ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
The tall neck-like or thorn-like prominence is then seen to be a mere elongated helmet, which is prolonged into a steep angle behind, so as to cover the back of the creature like a peaked roof, a feature from which the scientific name of this particular group of insects is derived, Membracis, meaning sharp-edged, the sides of the slope being covered by the close-fitting wings, which, though apparently compact with the body of the insect, are nevertheless always available for instant and most agile flight.
In the cicada, as I have shown, the eggs are inserted in the bark, but the young, hatching about six weeks later, immediately forsake the parent tree and enter the ground. But the young of our bittersweet membracis are not thus fickle, the entire life of the insect being spent on the plant. Moreover, its eggs are laid in late summer, and do not hatch until the following spring.
The membracis belongs to the tribe of "Bugs," Hemiptera, which implies that it possesses a beak instead of jaws, by which it sucks the sap of plants, precisely like the aphis, or plant-louse. This tiny beak we can readily distinguish bent beneath the body of our bittersweet hopper.
The papaw trees growing in my garden were infested by a small brown species of Membracis one of the leaf-hoppers that laid its eggs in a cottony-like nest by the side of the ribs on the under part of the leaves. The hopper would stand covering the nest until the young were hatched.
It is no easy thing even for the casual botanist to determine this nice point in a given segment of a bittersweet branch placed in his hand, the position of the chance leaf or leaf scar being his only guide. But the Membracis binotata rarely indeed never, so far as I have examined makes a mistake.
Our largest membracis is to be seen with difficulty on the terminal twigs of the locust-tree, its outlines so exactly imitating the thorny growths of the branch as to escape detection even by the closest scrutiny.
In the tropics their place is taken in a great measure by species of Coccidae and genera of Homoptera, such as Membracis and its allies. This ant took great care of the scale-insects, and attacked savagely any one interfering with them, as I often found to my cost, when trying to clear my pines, by being stung severely by them.
Not content with watching over their cattle, the ants brought up grains of damp earth, and built domed galleries over them, in which, under the vigilant guard of their savage little attendants, the scale-insects must, I think, have been secure from the attacks of all enemies. Many of the leaf-hoppers species, I think, of Membracis were attended by ants.
Word Of The Day