Ptilocnemus lemur

Ptilocnemus lemur is a species of feather-legged bug in the family Reduviidae native to Australia. Commonly known as the feather-legged assassin bug, it is a predator with a specialized gland called a trichome that it uses to attract and paralyse ants before feeding on them.

Ptilocnemus lemur
Scientific classification
Kingdom:
Animalia
Phylum:
Arthropoda
Class:
Insecta
Order:
Hemiptera
Family:
Reduviidae
Subfamily:
Holoptilinae
Tribe:
Holoptilini
Genus:
Ptilocnemus
Species:
P. lemur
Binomial name
Ptilocnemus lemur
(Westwood, 1840)

Description

Ptilocnemus lemur is a moderate sized assassin bug. It has a small head with a pair of feathery antennae with three segments, and a large down-curving proboscis, a wide thorax and a moderately broad abdomen. The wings have three veins. The hind pair of legs are much larger than the other two pairs and the tibiae of these are heavily clad with bristles. The head and thorax are yellowish-brown and the abdomen mottled grey and black.[1]

Distribution

P. lemur is native to Australia where it lives in forests. It can be found on the trunks of trees where its drab colours help to camouflage it as it stands on the bark.[2]

Biology

The trichome is a glandular structure on the ventral surface of the third abdominal segment. It produces a secretion that is attractive to ants and which paralyses them. In addition to this, there are glandular patches on the front few abdominal segments, and these patches, but not the trichome, are also present in nymphs of this species.[3]

Both adults and nymphs of this assassin bug are specialist predators on ants. The feeding behaviour of the nymph has been closely studied. It stands near an ant trail and waves one of its hairy hind legs to attract the attention of a passing ant, the jack jumper ant (Myrmecia pilosula) often being targeted. The prey may be bigger than the nymph,[2] and is also lured towards the bug by the release of a pheromone. When an ant approaches, the nymph raises its body so that the ant can taste the secretion produced by the trichome. The bug waits for the ant to grab its hind leg and then turns round and plunges the stylets in the proboscis into a weak spot in the ant's cuticle, the joint at the back of the head. It then jerks and shakes the ant around, perhaps to prevent it from biting, and injects saliva into the wound. The ant soon dies and the bug may carry it to a crevice or other concealed spot. When the body contents of the ant have liquefied, the bug sucks out the body fluids.[2][4]

gollark: Interesting.
gollark: If your brain loses oxygen input for something like 10 seconds, you become unconscious, and it fully shuts down given a few minutes or something like that.
gollark: Oxygen is needed to run aerobic respiration. Aerobic respiration is needed by lots of body stuff - muscles can run on anaerobic respiration for a bit, but not things like the brain.
gollark: I mean, you can go without oxygen input for a few minutes (I think because of stuff held in the lungs, though - stopping time would break absorption of that), but stuff does actually need it.
gollark: You can't just "not require oxygen".

References
  1. Westwood, J O. (1840). "Memoire on the genus Holoptilus". Transactions of the Entomological Society of London. 2: 248–253.
  2. Ceurstemont, Sandrine (2014-03-17). "Zoologger: Baby assassin bugs lure in deadly ants". New Scientist. Retrieved 2015-07-26.
  3. Weirauch, Christiane; Cassis, Gerasimos (2006). "Attracting Ants: The Trichome and Novel Glandular Areas on the Sternum of Ptilocnemus lemur (Heteroptera: Reduviidae: Holoptilinae)". Journal of the New York Entomological Society. 114 (1/2): 28–37. JSTOR 25010536.
  4. "Ptilocnemus lemur: the ant assassin". Myrmician. 2009-12-06. Retrieved 2015-07-26.
This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.