I work as a horticulturist at an aquarium. Surrounding the building are many floral, native, and vegetable gardens that can provide food, snacks, and enrichment for the animals inside! Besides that, many animals make their home (and meals) outside as well. It's cool when you see a an insect so colorful as this black swallowtail larva (Papilio polyxenes).
These are also known as parsnip swallowtails because plants in the carrot family serve as their host plants. Where I work, we have loads of dill (which they seem to prefer over fennel) and there's always a number of them on any nearby plants. This is a common find.
Common milkweed (Asclepias syriaca) serves as a host plant for a variety of insects. I discovered this red milkweed beetle (Tetraopes tetraophthalmus) munching on the foliage, apparently immune to its toxicity and stickiness.
Although I never noticed this long horned beetle while I was interning last year, I found it to be quite common. The red and black colors are aposematic, a word which here means advertising though bright colors or other perceivable characteristic that the organism is toxic/venomous etc. to potential predators and therefore inedible. I'm very curious as to what the larvae look like but I would imagine they look similar to another longhorned beetle; one that bored through the wood of my maple tree.
Rising on the scale of rarity, despite the amount of milkweed we have on the premises, is the monarch butterfly (Danaus plexippus).
Sometimes these uncommon larvae disappear after we find them. Maybe they move to other plants our get eaten, despite their black and yellow warning decoration and foul taste. This particular caterpillar is already quite large and will help build the next generation of monarchs which will then migrate to their winter home in Michoac谩n, Mexico.
The next insects partially evaded my scanning attempts and thus remain unidentified.
The long antennae indicate that this is a cricket, not a grasshopper. It appears to still be a nymph.
The markings on this beetle are similar to those of yellow soldier beetles, however this beetle does not have a black abdomen.
Both of these anomalies were found on common milkweed as well, though it is unclear if it is their host plant or not.
I thought I'd end with a bit of a cliff-hanger. Who knows, maybe one of you has that knowledge in your brain 馃
Pretty soon my workplace will be hosting a bio-blitz. This is when a bunch of expert scientists come and attempt to catalogue all the species existing in a biome! I want to be part of the entomologist team. They will probably have many experts... Myrmecologists, lepidopterists...
Anyways, I'm very excited to be a part of that! And on that note I leave you all.
Never underestimate the power of identifying insects. It could be a matter of life and death (for you or a plant)!