More than 2,000 different species of fireflies, also known as lightning bugs, light up this world. None of them is actually a fly. All are beetles, even the ones that are called glow worms.
Similarly, pictured here are two species of a family of insects called the Fulgoridae, of which it was long ago erroneously believed that they emitted light at night, and were hence given the false name of Lantern Fly.
It is ironic that the error which persists in the common name Lantern Fly nearly 300 years after it was first made is said to have originated with Maria Sibylla Merian, a brilliant German naturalist, scientist, and artist who lived from 1647 – 1717.
More than anyone else, Maria proved beyond doubt that moths and butterflies progressed from an egg, to a caterpillar, then a chrysalis or cocoon, and emerged a second time as an adult of the Lepidoptera (scaly-winged) family, through the wondrous process of metamorphosis.
Up to that time, people believed that butterflies and moths, along with swallows and other birds we now know to be migratory, over-wintered in the mud of lakes and stream beds, thus explaining their temporary absence from the landscape.
Insects captivated Maria Merian. Her quote about her childhood, and her considerable artistic skills, go a long way towards summing up her entire life: “In my youth I spent my time investigating insects.”
She travelled across the sea to Suriname in north eastern tropical South America, historically linked to The Netherlands, where Maria Merian lived for a time, to investigate plants and insects.
In Suriname, because the most spectacular and largest species of Fulgoroid insects appeared in tropical rainforests, Maria probably first encountered the creatures she is said later to have called Lantern Flies.
These mostly large insects, (up to 75mm) were spectacularly coloured, so much so that when some Europeans first encountered them they thought they must be some strange new type of butterfly.
Many of the insects in this family feature strange formations on their heads, possibly to ward off predators. Some look like an insect version of a unicorn. Scientists call these projections out the front of their heads a “process.”
In some, the process is hollow, and the true head is set back safely inside it.
Maria Merian surmised incorrectly, apparently, that the projection out the front of the insect served the handy purpose of giving off light during mating.
Maybe, recalling the Biblical story of Jacob, who ended up on his wedding night with the wrong sister Leah instead of his beloved Rachel, the carrying of a lantern for the purpose of first verifying the identity of the bride, mightn’t have been a bad idea to prevent a certain amount of wifely discontent.
And so it is, that after all this waffling, we come today to look at two of the 14 or 15 Australian members of the Fulgoridae Planthoppers.
No strange projections on the heads of this down-under lot – and no confusing with fireflies!
These two are members of that world-wide family of small critters called hoppers - not grasshoppers, but tree-hoppers, plant-hoppers, and leaf-hoppers.
A week or so ago on a rare recent day without rain, five largely black “Lantern Flies” in two different species turned up on the smooth pale trunk of a ten metre Bumpy Ash, a species of Flindersia (schottiana) I planted about 25 years ago.
Three of the Planthoppers, which often rested on that trunk, were of the species called Desudaba psittaceus.
Psittaceus means “parrot”, in Latin, and flags that the creature is brightly coloured. This particular one does not disappoint. At 20 mm in length, not nearly as large or spectacular as some of its tropical overseas cousins, the Green and Black Planthopper, as it is commonly known, is black, with white eyes, a bright green, white spotted abdomen, and hidden underwings of bright red, seldom seen. It has no spots.
Joining its cousins for the first time that particular day, were two other handsome hoppers called Desudaba maculatus, which means “spotted”. This insect is also jet black with orange spots on its wings, white spots on its green abdomen, and orange eyes.
A person who had submitted a photograph of the Green and Black Planthopper to his online blog said that he’d found his on a garden citrus. The location of these five visitors on the Bumpy Ash was consistent with that, as Flindersias are in the wider botanical family of Rutaceae, of which citrus are also members.
Black insects on a smooth pale tree-trunk are not very well camouflaged, but these five “Lantern Flies” quickly demonstrated their three-step method of protecting themselves against predators.
As a person approaches they sit perfectly still, only moving when a perceived enemy gets too close. Then each insect locates its inner goanna, moving off slowly and circling round the back of the trunk, and continuing quietly to do that as long as it is followed.
Finally, when it is clear that the pursuer isn’t about to stop, the Plant Hopper lives up to its name, firing itself so strongly into the air, powered by spring-like muscles in its rear legs, that it is difficult to follow it with the naked eye.
We are told that Plant Hoppers use the trunks and branches of trees as virtual telephone lines by tapping various parts of their bodies on trees to convey messages to one another. They feed on the sap of trees and are inoffensive and don’t bite.
The artist-naturalist Maria Sibylla Nerian, who died over 300 years ago, put the beauty into science, people say.
But she knew that the beauty, always there, like the Lantern Flies themselves, required a concentrated effort to see with deliberately focused eyes.
