Pod-Sucking Bug - Riptortus serripes
Family Alydidae
This page contains pictures and information about Pod-Sucking Bugs that we found in the Brisbane area, Queensland, Australia.
- Body length 25mm
- This Pod-Sucking Bug is brown in colour with yellow lines along body and has strong spiny hind legs. Its body is slim and narrower in the middle, with a sharp spine on each side of the thorax.
- They live inside the curved leaf which is attached by silk. We can find quite a number of them on a board leave tree in Wishart.
Then we found they are common on grasses. They are known to feed on Acacia and beans.
- Last instars, body length 25mm
- Last instars easily found in early summer.
Hiding from predator
On October 2005, we the adult Pod-Sucking Bugs and different stages of instars on the Easter Cassia (Senna pendula) cylindrical seedpods. In most of the other times, we only saw the Pod-Sucking Bug adults, seldom saw the nymphs.
The last instars are about the same size as the adult. Their body colours mimic the seedpod, with brown and dark brown patterns.. When disturbed, the adults ejected some yellow liquid.
The small Pod-Sucking Bug nymph mimics black ants.
On a Acacia tree near by, we saw some of those Pod-Sucking Bugs resting on the seedpods.
- Reference and Link:
- 1. Senna pendula - Potential Environmental Weeds in Australia, Australian Biological Resources Study, Department of the Environment and Heritage.
