Soldier bug eggs

What a cool little critter. The spined soldier bug AKA Podisus maculiventris, is a species of insect that is commonly found in North America. They are predators of gypsy moth caterpillars and the larvae of beetles such as the Colorado potato beetle and the Mexican bean beetle. Due to the fact that they eat Mexican bean beetles, they are regarded by me as very good things to have in the garden. A female picked yesterday, for her own reasons, to lay her eggs on my front door storm window. I was lucky enough to be there at just that time and the process was both fascinating and pretty neat to watch. I also decided it might be well worth my time to collect a few of the eggs and then observe them as they hatched under my microscope.

I wanted to do this in a way in which I could both observe the eggs mature, while at the same, time not harm them in any manner. To this end, I decided to try and move them to a microscope slide that would be kept securely in a covered Petri dish until they hatched. I wanted to observe their development and then would release them safely outside after hatching. (In my way of thinking, all life is precious). Following is some additional information I gleaned of the net.

Adult spined soldier bugs are brownish, about the size of your fingernail and have a prominent spine on each "shoulder." (This is not the origin of the name spined soldier bug . . . the "spined" refers to spines on the legs!) They overwinter as adults, hiding in leaf litter in woods around fields, and begin emerging around mid-April in Indiana. Females can lay up to 500 eggs and live up to 125 days. Males are slightly smaller than females and live up to 180 days. Females begin depositing eggs 4-7 days after emerging. The number of eggs a female lays depends on how well she is fed the more she eats the more eggs she lays and on the type of prey she eats (Colorado potato beetles are particularly "bad" prey; Mexican bean beetles are "ok"). Survival, development, body weight and longevity also depend on the type of prey and the frequency of feeding. Females in the field eat about 1 prey every 2 days, which is a lot less than they can eat when food is readily available. Females fed too much often die earlier than those fed less perhaps a health lesson to us all!

The eggs are deposited in masses of 15-70, and range in color from cream-colored to black. Eggs hatch in 4-7 days, depending on temperature. The brick red first instar spined soldier bugs are not predaceous (indeed they eat nothing at all!), whereas the remaining 4 instars (immature stages), are predaceous. Development from newly hatched to adult takes 25-30 days. There are 1-3 generations per year.

At right is a slightly blurry picture I took of the actual eggs.

I had already taken eight eggs from the window leaving the rest alone. The cement that the female bug used to attach the eggs was as tough as any super glue I’ve ever used. Credit Mother Nature for that.

On the 14th, four of the eggs have hatched as you can seen in the picture below. The bugs were tiny, but also were exact copies of their parents. After getting some pictures, I took the slide out to the front yard and released the bugs. A very cool thing to see. Thanks Mother Nature.