Lygaeus kalmii -- small milkweed bug. Compare with box elder bug, Boisea trivittata, which we displayed here.
6 Comments
Paul Burnett · 25 June 2012
What's the location? Colorado?
Matt Young · 25 June 2012
What’s the location? Colorado?
Boulder, right up the street. It is the only one I have ever seen, except for the one that flew away a day or so ago.
shebardigan · 25 June 2012
Growing up in Denver, I had similar-looking insects identified to me as Box Elder bugs. After half a century, my memory of the actual appearance of the critter does not enable me to decide which it might have been.
Henry J · 26 June 2012
Its still a insect!!!11!!!eleven!!!!
co · 26 June 2012
Matt Young said:
What’s the location? Colorado?
Boulder, right up the street. It is the only one I have ever seen, except for the one that flew away a day or so ago.
Interesting! I grew up in Durango, and we had box elders, large- and small-milkweed bugs, milkweed beetles, and monarch butterflies all over the damned place. Our whole ecosystem was pretty much dominated by milkweed and elder trees, it seems.
Before I left (in about '95 - '97), fireflies started showing up, which I'd never seen before, and my father, who grew up near Houston, had only seen as a small child on the Gulf Coast.
Matt Young · 26 June 2012
You can see a photograph of a box elder bug by clicking the second link above. It looks a lot like a small milkweed bug, and it is about the same size, but I do not think they are very closely related, depending, I suppose, on your definition of very closely.
I do not know about Durango, but we did not see a lot of box elder bugs here in Boulder until a relatively few years ago; now they are something of a nuisance (at least at my house, but my point of view may be too parochial). We only rarely see fireflies and monarch butterflies here.
6 Comments
Paul Burnett · 25 June 2012
What's the location? Colorado?
Matt Young · 25 June 2012
shebardigan · 25 June 2012
Growing up in Denver, I had similar-looking insects identified to me as Box Elder bugs. After half a century, my memory of the actual appearance of the critter does not enable me to decide which it might have been.
Henry J · 26 June 2012
Its still a insect!!!11!!!eleven!!!!
co · 26 June 2012
Matt Young · 26 June 2012
You can see a photograph of a box elder bug by clicking the second link above. It looks a lot like a small milkweed bug, and it is about the same size, but I do not think they are very closely related, depending, I suppose, on your definition of very closely.
I do not know about Durango, but we did not see a lot of box elder bugs here in Boulder until a relatively few years ago; now they are something of a nuisance (at least at my house, but my point of view may be too parochial). We only rarely see fireflies and monarch butterflies here.