Curiouser and curiouser

Two of my recent posts have shown the results of my research on eggs and insects in Juncus rushes, and a great deal of additional background research has been taking place in the interval since those posts were made. In order to keep things neat and tidy, I'll be reproducing a couple of images from those posts in the report that follows.

Firstly, on 29th March, I showed these eggs:

Leafhopper eggs in Juncus

These have been identified as leafhopper eggs, but the species is still undetermined. Two species of leafhopper are known to associate with Juncus: Cicadella viridis and Conomelus anceps.

On 22nd April, I showed this dead specimen of Conomelus anceps:

Conomelus anceps killed by Entomophthora petchii on Juncus effusus

I was able to get a very accurate description of the Conomelus eggs from the UK expert on such matters and after some exhaustive searching, I managed to find a sample of Conomelus eggs from the Juncus:

Conomelus anceps eggs in Juncus

From the scale of the image, it can be seen that these eggs are very much smaller than the original leafhopper eggs from March. It's also worth pointing out that while the original eggs are in a line of 15 eggs, the Conomelus eggs are laid in smaller batches of 4 or 5.

Cicadella viridis is a much larger leafhopper than Conomelus anceps, but it turns that although C. viridis feeds on Juncus, it lays its eggs in the bark of thin-barked trees, so the identity of the original leafhopper eggs still remains a mystery.

In more recent pursuit of the owner of the original eggs, I have found other species and other eggs. This latest set of eggs is most bizarre:

Conomelus anceps eggs (A)

Arrow 'A' shows a couple of Conomelus anceps eggs, but the multicoloured eggs are, again, in a straight line (and are larger). The varied colours and shapes of these eggs suggest that they have been parasitised - presumably by minute parasitic wasps. So I think this image shows two sets of eggs: the Conomelus eggs on the left and a parasitised row of the original eggs which still remain unidentified.

Arrow 'B' points to a particular egg which caught my attention. It seems to show a nymph of a leafhopper of some kind, so that is my current area of research. I've blown up that part of the image here:

It looks to me like a leafhopper nymph looking directly towards the camera. Time (and a great deal of further research) will tell.

Three for the price of one

As part of the research that I'm currently carrying out on the eggs and larvae from Soft Rush (click here for a recap), I continue to examine specimens in quite a bit of detail. Yesterday I found what is clearly a minute leafhopper covered with a fine white web:

Frog Hopper on Juncus

My mind immediately leapt to an Entomophthora-type fungus that has killed the leafhopper. A bit of research shows that there is a single fungus - Entomophthora petchii - that kills various members of this huge family of bugs, but at this stage I had no idea which leafhopper I was looking at, or even which stage of the lifecycle it had reached when it was killed (nymph? adult?). A few features need examination: those dotted wing covers seem to be small and incompletely formed. This could suggest a nymph - since bugs all go through various nymph stages (instars) before reaching adulthood, or it might be one of the brachypterous species, where specimens can reach adulthood with either incomplete wings or fully winged. Size is also an issue: this hopper is only 4mm from nose to tail.

I took shots from various angles:

Frog Hopper on Juncus

And eventually found Conomelus anceps on the brilliant UK bugs website:  http://www.britishbugs.org.uk It turns out this is a Juncus feeder, and is quite common, but I've never seen it before, so that's one new species for me. I had also never previously identified the bug-killing fungus Entomophthora petchii, although I've certainly seen leafhoppers killed by a fungus. So that's two new species for my list.

I then decided to check previous records of Entomophthora petchii and found that there are only four existing records in the BI fungal database: all from Yorkshire (Helmsley, Pocklington, Leeds, Holmfirth) (and recorded under Zoophthora petchii), so I have moved the distribution map for this species quite some way to the west. First Irish record.

So one sample has led to three new records: two for my species list and one for Ireland:

Conomelus anceps killed by Entomophthora petchii on Juncus effusus

March and April have both been very variable in terms of weather, with very hot sunshine interspersed with long periods of rain or hail. The early heat has brought out various hoverflies much earlier than usual: this is Helophilus pendulus, which I regard as a summer species:

Helophilus pendulus

And this is a Syrphus:

Syrphus sp. hoverfly

The standard reference says "April onwards", for these two species, but I've certainly never seen them this early.

Post edited to tighten up naming (leafhopper).