Out and about 
Insect investigations 
... Valda Dedman 
B ugs suck. No, I am not being derogatory. Sucking is 
what distinguishes bugs from other insects. Their 
feeding apparatus is a rostrum, a specialised ‘straw’ which 
first pierces the food source. Some bugs do have nasty 
habits. Think of bed bugs or bugs that suck the goodness 
out of our treasured plants. Some are very colourful, such 
as the jewel bugs. The Parent Bug gets its name from its 
attentive care of its children; adults remain with their 
offspring for several weeks after they hatch. This is 
relatively rare behaviour in the insect world. 
The ‘true’ bugs are the half-winged, the Hemiptera; their 
wings lie along the body when at rest. In Australia there 
are more than 5500 known species, some with very 
interesting habits. When mating, the bed bug dispenses 
with niceties; the male just pierces the female’s body wall 
to deposit his sperm, which migrate to the egg through her 
body fluid. Assassin bugs are killers. Their mouthparts 
have become modified into a weapon (the proboscis). 
They ambush their prey, which they grasp with their legs, 
then they stab and they suck their victim to death. Beware, 
they can ‘bite’ you too. 
There are three main parts to the Order Hemiptera, based 
on wing structure and body form. Scale insects and 
aphids, for instance, have few veins in their wings and are 
soft-bodied; leaf-hoppers and cicadas have many veins in 
their wings and have harder bodies; while assassin and 
crusader bugs are hard-bodied and their 
forewings have a toughened base. 
Now, what has led me to bugs? Two photos 
from Helen Schofield, of bugs that she came 
upon while cleaning Dodonaea viscosa 
seeds at the Barwon Water nursery. They 
were both very colourful creatures and we 
did our best to identify them. The red and 
black one may be Choerocoris paganus, the 
Red Jewel Bug or Ground Shield Bug, which 
is known to feed on Dodonaea seeds. The 
pretty little yellow one with the black bands 
on its back and its yellow shoulders could 
possibly be a nymph of the Parent Bug 
Elasmucha sp. 
Dodonaea, was called Hopbush by 
early white settlers in Australia 
because of a supposed similarity of 
the winged seed bundles to hops, 
and beer was brewed from them. A 
strange-tasting and bitter drink, but 
beer can be brewed from many 
plants. Hopbush is a member of the 
Soapberry Sapindaceae family, 
which includes Lychees, Rambutin 
and Tamarind. Aborigines knew D. 
viscosa as the Oyster Bush 
because when the winged seed 
capsules had deepened in colour to 
reddish-orange, they knew the 
oysters on the coast were ready for 
harvesting. Hopbushes have 
Elasmucha sp. 
Photo: 
always been used for medicinal purposes by native 
peoples, particularly in treating wounds or relieving 
toothache. Peruvian Indians also chewed the leaves as a 
substitute for Coca. The addition of ash or lime would help 
to neutralise toxic chemicals. Dodonaea is known to 
contain cyanogenic glycoside. 
Ants may also collect fallen seeds—they like the 
elaisomes, nutritious fleshy attachments, so they store the 
seeds in piles below ground, thus keeping them safe and 
ready to crack open and germinate after a bushfire. 
During December the cicadas started calling, as they do 
here every year. These very big bugs had come up out of 
the soil—we found their split-open shiny brown nymphal 
cases—and now we saw the big greengrocer cicadas. It is 
thought the greengrocers live for several years below the 
soil. Some emerge here every year. 
Two cases, one not fully solved 
Bugs suck and caterpillars chew. The November Naturalist 
carried photos of two case-moths, the Leaf Hylarcta 
huebneri and the Faggot or Lictor Clania ignobilis, from 
Lynne Clarke’s garden. Lynne went off to Africa for a 
month and I kept the caterpillars in ajar in my living room. 
The Faggot Case-moth showed no action and was 
replaced with a larger specimen from a Fuchsia Gum 
Eucalyptus forrestiana and kept in its own jar. Each jar 
had a lid which was not fully across the top, 
the gap allowing air to circulate but not wide 
enough to let the caterpillar escape. At night 
they would sometimes attach themselves to 
the undersurface of the lid and hang there. 
Both caterpillars were active and ate 
voraciously; they were supplied with fresh 
leaves and produced plenty of droppings, 
round and black. 
I observed the Leaf Case-moth closely from 
26 October 2012 onwards, removing 
droppings from its jar and supplying it with 
fresh hakea foliage, whose new tips it 
seemed to prefer. On 19 November it 
attached itself to a piece of foliage, 
produced no more droppings and 
there was no further evidence of 
leaves having been chewed during 
the night. It stayed hanging in the 
same spot and I guessed it was 
either changing to a later instar or 
pupating. 
Helen Schofield 
Leaf Case-moth pupal case Photo: Valda Dedman 
Then, on 29th December, I glanced 
over at the jar, which sat on a small 
table near my chair, and noticed 
movement. There was a dark little 
moth flying around. At the bottom of 
the moth’s former case ‘home’ was a 
shiny black pupal case, from which 
the male moth had just emerged. I 
was in luck; had it been a female it 
would have remained within its case 
Geelong Naturalist February 2012 1 
