{"id":7075,"date":"2020-09-03T13:12:50","date_gmt":"2020-09-03T17:12:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/catinaanderson.com\/photography\/?p=7075"},"modified":"2020-09-13T17:28:00","modified_gmt":"2020-09-13T21:28:00","slug":"jagged-ambush-bug","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/catinaanderson.com\/photography\/jagged-ambush-bug\/","title":{"rendered":"Jagged Ambush Bug"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>This was an insect I&#8217;d never seen before starting this project.\u00a0 There are actually quite a few I&#8217;d never seen in terms of individual species but I feel like in general I&#8217;d seen a wasp, I&#8217;d seen a bee, I&#8217;d seen a katydid&#8230; but this insect was completely new to me in all my 40+ years.\u00a0 Looking at the interesting front legs I thought it might be related to the praying mantis but it is, instead, related to the assassin bug.<\/p>\n<p>This is a jagged ambush bug &#8211; genus Phymata.\u00a0 <img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"pp-insert-all size-full aligncenter\" alt=\"\" src=\"http:\/\/catinaanderson.com\/photography\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/09\/20200802_CMA_Ambush_Bug_on_Pycanthemum_muticum.jpg\" width=\"900\" height=\"600\" \/><\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"pp-insert-all size-full aligncenter\" alt=\"\" src=\"http:\/\/catinaanderson.com\/photography\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/09\/20200801_CMA_Ambush_Bug_on_Pycanthemum_muticum-4.jpg\" width=\"600\" height=\"900\" \/><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"pp-insert-all size-full aligncenter\" alt=\"\" src=\"http:\/\/catinaanderson.com\/photography\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/09\/20200801_CMA_Ambush_Bug_on_Pycanthemum_muticum-5.jpg\" width=\"900\" height=\"600\" \/><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"pp-insert-all size-full aligncenter\" alt=\"\" src=\"http:\/\/catinaanderson.com\/photography\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/09\/20200801_CMA_Ambush_Bug_on_Pycanthemum_muticum.jpg\" width=\"900\" height=\"600\" \/><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"pp-insert-all size-full aligncenter\" alt=\"\" src=\"http:\/\/catinaanderson.com\/photography\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/09\/20200802_CMA_Ambush_Bug_on_Pycanthemum_muticum-5.jpg\" width=\"900\" height=\"600\" \/><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"pp-insert-all size-full aligncenter\" alt=\"\" src=\"http:\/\/catinaanderson.com\/photography\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/09\/20200802_CMA_Ambush_Bug_on_Pycanthemum_muticum-6.jpg\" width=\"900\" height=\"506\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Interesting note &#8211; I originally believed this was mating behavior but after some research I found some information on bugguide.net that the image below shows what is called coupling and it is not, in fact, mating.\u00a0 It may be a way for the insects to hunt together and take down larger prey.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"pp-insert-all size-full aligncenter\" alt=\"\" src=\"http:\/\/catinaanderson.com\/photography\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/09\/20200804_CMA_Ambush_Bug_on_Pycanthemum_muticum.jpg\" width=\"900\" height=\"600\" \/><\/p>\n<p>This is one of the over 100 species of insects I&#8217;ve photographed on my mountain mint plants this summer.\u00a0 I will continue to post as I have time to edit.\u00a0 In the meantime, if you&#8217;d like to see what&#8217;s been posted so far look at the menu above under &#8220;In the Garden&#8221; and &#8220;Native Plants.&#8221;\u00a0 Every day I still find 2 &#8211; 3 species I had not yet photographed.\u00a0 And I&#8217;m over 100 so far&#8230; it&#8217;s really incredible.\u00a0 If you&#8217;re looking for a plant that really provides support for a huge number of insects consider adding this one to your garden and strengthen you&#8217;re backyard ecosystem!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This was an insect I&#8217;d never seen before starting this project.\u00a0 There are actually quite a few I&#8217;d never seen in terms of individual species but I feel like in general I&#8217;d seen a wasp, I&#8217;d seen a bee, I&#8217;d seen a katydid&#8230; but this insect was completely new to me in all my 40+ [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7081,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,922,923,1001,1130,300,1188],"tags":[1210,482,13,15,955,832,293,1215,1018,1211,1196,1240],"class_list":["post-7075","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-animals","category-in-the-garden","category-insects-in-the-garden","category-macro-portraiture","category-native-plants","category-portraiture","category-things-you-see-on-mountain-mint","tag-ambush-bug","tag-animal","tag-flower","tag-garden","tag-gardening","tag-insects","tag-macro","tag-nature","tag-nature-photography","tag-phymata","tag-pycnanthemum-muticum","tag-things-you-see-on-mountain-mint"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/catinaanderson.com\/photography\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7075","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/catinaanderson.com\/photography\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/catinaanderson.com\/photography\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/catinaanderson.com\/photography\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/catinaanderson.com\/photography\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7075"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/catinaanderson.com\/photography\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7075\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7087,"href":"http:\/\/catinaanderson.com\/photography\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7075\/revisions\/7087"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/catinaanderson.com\/photography\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7081"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/catinaanderson.com\/photography\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7075"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/catinaanderson.com\/photography\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7075"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/catinaanderson.com\/photography\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7075"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}