The weather was still pretty warm on the 25th of October. It was a sunny day, the sky was clear and almost completely blue in the early afternoon when I spent a couple of hours searching for spiders and insects to feed my passion for exploring the small details of the living world around me. Just like in every segment of this relatively long series, the photographs you'll see in today's episode were all taken in Marlera, the coastal area situated a couple of kilometers from the village of Liznjan and about five or six kilometers from where I live.
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Marlera is a place that offers a nice biodiversity a short drive from home. A kind of place that never disappoints me.
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The grasshopper shown in this photograph and the well-camouflaged beetle shown in the following one ...
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... were both photographed on the leaves of the same plant ...
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... the impressively long leaves of the Onopordum illyricum thistle.
The grasshopper is Pezotettix giornae, a species that already appeared in some of the previous episodes.
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The beetle is Cassida rubiginosa, commonly known as the thistle tortoise beetle, a species from the Chrysomelidae family. Next to this Cassida rubiginosa which was displaying its antennae ...
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... there was another one that didn't. When the flat beetle hides its legs and antennae under the large casing made of pronotum and elytra, it looks like a green limpet on the green surface of the leaf and is therefore very hard to notice.
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Here you can see both beetles, posing fairly close to each other, in the same shot. First I took quite a few photographs with the flash of my camera on, becouse it was easier that way. The shutter speed was nicely high and everything was more manageable, but ...
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... but I liked how the green looked in ambient light so I took the time and effort to get at least one more photograph without involving the flash.
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Both the adults and the larvae feed on various plants from the Asteraceae family, which includes thistles.
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Five or six meters from the flat young Onopordum illyricum that still hasn't grown the robust stem ...
... on the pretty tall, dry remains of the Foeniculum vulgare plant, I found another species from the genus Cassida of the Chrysomelidae family.
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This beautiful beetle was completely new to me. Only today, while preparing this post, I found out on the Internet that the name of the species is Cassida margaritacea.
While very similarly shaped, Cassida margaritacea is slightly less flat and much smaller than Cassida rubiginosa.
Both the adults and the larvae feed on various plants from the Caryophyllaceae family. The most numerous host plants in Marlera are probably Silene vulgaris and Silene latifolia.
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This is the Echium italicum. A dry Echium italicum, to be more precise.
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I photographed quite a few of these plants on the 25th of October. In the following shot ...
... you can see a grasshopper that was resting on one of them. A few seconds after the photograph was taken, the Aiolopus strepens - that's the scientific name of the species, jumped away.
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This Eublemma parva ...
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... a moth from the Erebidae family ...
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... was photographed on another Echium italicum plant not far from there.
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These moths mainly inhabit hot and arid areas. Places like nutrient-poor grasslands, rocky slopes, and scrubland. All the three mentioned habitats are present in Marlera.
The larvae feed on quite a few plants from the Asteraceae family. One of those host plants, the Dittrichia viscosa, covers large patches of rocky terrain here in Marlera.
The spider, shown in the following photograph ...
... was photographed on the nearby juicy leaf of the Verbascum undulatum plant ...
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... that has formed a relatively large rosette low on the ground.
The spider belongs to the Lycosidae family, that's for sure.
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The genus is Pardosa, that's another thing that I'm absolutely sure of, but ...
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... but I can't tell you what species exactly this is. Could be the Pardosa agricola, for example. Or Pardosa amentata. Or something else, I don't know.
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This very common but quite extravagantly decorated bug ...
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... was found and photographed on the dry remains of the Scolymus hispanicus plant.
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I saw plenty of these bugs there ...
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... and photographed quite a few.
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The name of the species is Pyrrhocoris apterus.
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The family is Pyrrhocoridae.
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These bugs feed mainly on seeds lime trees and mallow plants. But there is a variety of other food they can consume when there's no Tilia or Malva on the menu. Other plants and their seeds. Insect carcasses. Small living insects or weakened bigger living insects and smaller members of their own species, sometimes, especially the soft, freshly molted ones.
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On the 25th of October, the dry Scolymus hispanicus probably still had some seeds left on it.
Besides a bit of food, the dead plant also offers a great shelter.
Reaching a Pyrrhocoris apterus surrounded by all these hard, sharp thorns isn't an easy task.
Since the day was warm and I was still wearing summer clothes, photographing the bugs in their thorny citadel was a painful endeavor. After leaving the bugs ...
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... I photographed a small chunk of the scenery with the Echium italicum in the foreground, and then ...
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... after some more walking ...
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... I came across a small fig tree (Ficus carica).
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Here you can see another Pezotettix giornae grasshopper. This species did not only appear in quite a few of the previous photographs but also at the beginning of today's post. In the following photograph ...
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... you can see the completely dry but impressively tall Onopordum illyricum thistle on which the grasshopper was photographed.
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This lovely yellow butterfly, the Colias croceus from the Pieridae family, was resting in the grass near the thistle.
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Among the dry stems and foliage on the lower part of the plant ...
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... I found another grasshopper.
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Anacridium aegyptium is probably the biggest grasshopper that can be seen in this area.
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AND THAT'S IT. HOPE YOU ENJOYED THIS MACRO SAFARI. AS ALWAYS HERE ON HIVE, THE PHOTOGRAPHS ARE MY WORK.
The following links will take you to the sites with more information about some of the protagonists of this post. I found some stuff about them there.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onopordum_illyricum
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pezotettix_giornae
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thistle_tortoise_beetle
https://www.gbif.org/species/6097776
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Echium_italicum
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aiolopus_strepens
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eublemma_parva
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pardosa
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyrrhocoris_apterus
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colias_croceus
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anacridium_aegyptium