Hemipteran Diet Variety: Dung & Carrion
Today my supervisor showed me some photographs of male leafhoppers (Hemiptera: Cicadellidae) feeding on river mud, a behaviour not previously recorded.
It got us thinking and we talked about unusual feeding amongst the Hemiptera in general, including some observations I made last year and a those featured in a summary paper about the Heteroptera.
Consumption of faeces (coprophily) and carrion (necrophily) has previously been observed in 35 Heteropteran species in eight families, the majority of which were seen in the Coreidae, six species, and Alydidae, four species (Jérôme, 2007). This behaviour has been mostly (95% of the time) recorded in male insects.
During July and August 2008 I saw Pentatoma rufipes (Hemiptera: Pentatomidae) & Coreus marginatus (Hemiptera: Coreidae) feeding on fresh (wet) bird droppings. At the time I presumed this was well-recorded behaviour, made a note of it, and carried on with my field work. Whilst I wont presume observations of those two species have never been published, the summary paper by Jérôme doesn’t mention those two species.
Coreus marginatus on bramble
Whilst there are some theories about why these bugs engage in this unusual behaviour, I intend to do some information hunting and find out more. I’ve been told that butterflies feed on faeces or mud, so that seems a good place to start looking.
Jérôme, C. (2007) Note on coprophily and necrophily in the Hemiptera Heteroptera. Entomologie, 77: 107-112.
Tags: coprophily, Coreidae, Coreus marginatus, diet, Entomology, feeding, Hemiptera, necrophily, Pentatoma rufipes, Pentatomidae
