Across the street from the lotus pond that gave me that lovely bullfrog last week is a nice patch of Spreading Dogbane (Apocynum androsaemifolium). Curiously enough, this beetle which feeds on these plants is known as the Dogbane Beetle (Chrysochus auratus).
No messing around with saturation here…they really are this colorfully iridescent. I try to photograph at least one every year and today was the day. And, yes, this is a blade of grass, not dogbane. 🙂
Stephen Gingold Nature Photography Blog 
Very nice shot. I like how iridescence works. Lots of examples of it in nature.
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Thanks, Jim. I think it was enhanced a bit by the dew drops, but these are little gems. I am not a fan of Christopher Marley’s work but you might enjoy seeing just how many examples there are on his page. It’s not that I don’t think his creations are beautiful, but I am not liking the number of insects he is responsible for being taken out of the environment. Nature has its own way of balancing things and humans are not of much help in that respect.
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Nice photos. I’d rather leave them in the wild. Here is some science in a web site on the interference of light and insects. I couldn’t help myself.
http://www.webexhibits.org/causesofcolor/15D.html
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Thanks, Jim. I am always happy to learn a little more about nature.
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I wasn’t familiar with Christopher Marley’s work, so thanks for the intro. I understand your concern about removing creatures from the wild, but insects in general are so numerous that I don’t imagine there’s much to worry about in this instance. Austin is known for its colony of Mexican free-tail bats, and I just found this on the Internet: “Free-tail bats consume enormous amounts of moths and other insects. Some roosts are known to contain millions of bats. In those colonies it is estimated that 250 tons of insects can be consumed every night.”
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I am familiar with your bats…from a distance, of course. My concern with the number of insects involved in Marley’s creations is more than numbers. I am as concerned with the insects lives as I am with those of wildflowers which I never pick. I feel the same way about insects. I do not collect them for pinning or cooling in order to photograph them. Same as with larger wildlife. It is bad enough that we have to consume each other for our existence without using other creatures for decorative art. And as you pointed out, nature has plenty of ways to balance numbers without our interference. See: Passenger Pigeon for example of vast numbers and how easily they can disappear at the hands of humans…or honey bees for that matter.
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Nicely captured!
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Thank you.
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Beautiful little booger and a very nice shot.
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Thanks, Yvonne. That’s how I feel about most insects although admittedly some are more beautiful in our eyes than others. 🙂
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Such beautiful creatures. I love it that you feature insects, Steve 🙂
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Sometimes I think that I have too many interests and should just whittle it down to a few. But that would be difficult. Insect season, for me, is just starting to get going. 🙂
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Sometimes I think that, too, but who can resist bugs? 🙂
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There’s that segmented antenna again. It was only in the last year or so that I learned to differentiate between moths and butterflies by their antennae. There’s so much information in such tiny packages.
The iriidescence is wonderful. It almost looks artificial. It also made me think (for perhaps the first time in my life) of iridium. Here’s what the wiki says about that:
“Iridium was discovered in 1803 among insoluble impurities in natural platinum. Smithson Tennant, the primary discoverer, named iridium for the Greek goddess Iris, personification of the rainbow, because of the striking and diverse colors of its salts.”
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That is why I mentioned that they really do look like this, Linda. For anyone not familiar with beetles, and this one in particular, one would assume that I had boosted the colors and saturation.
I have never given much thought to Iridium either, so thanks for broadening my view.
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He doesn’t look too secure on the grass, Steve. Better return him to the Dogbane.
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I did not place him there, Andrew. He was upon the grass of his own accord so I left him where found. This isn’t the first time I have found one elsewhere besides a dogbane stem.
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Excellent image, beautiful color and detail. I haven’t seen any at my favorite dogbane patch this year, I’ve been checking regularly. I’m envious!
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This is at a reasonably decent size patch, Tom. But I only saw a couple of these on the plants. Maybe they are just coming around although I did see other pictures of them posted earlier on a Facebook insect group’s page.
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