The Amazonian "Couple's Bug"

This post comes under a set of two unfortunate circumstances.  First, Blogger seems adamant that I be identified not by my Yale email or actual name, but by an account and screenname I set up in middle school.  Second, I've been taking photos on my SLR rather than ipad camera for the past two weeks, forgetting that my only memory card reader is in Boston.  So instead of something local and recent, here are some photos of a Fulgora laternaria I found a few months ago in Ecuador.  F. laternaria is related to planthoppers and is know in most of its range as the machaca (as well as the jequitiranaboia in much of the lowland Amazon, but I'm sticking to with machaca for now).  Machacas are the source of great folklore and are rumored to have many bizarre behaviors and inter-species interactions, few of which seem to have been documented by the scientific community.  The idea that the peanut-like appendage on their head lights up like a firefly seems to really be just a rumor, but there is plenty of speculation as to what it might actually be for (one website mentioned that they knock it against trees to attract mates, and this one's did seem hollow, so....)  Others speculate that the "head" might help the machaca mimic unpalatable lizards.  It has its share of cool plant interactions- for example, it perches mostly on toxic trees, and one online source claimed this was because it absorbs toxins found in trees to make it poisonous to predators.

 Check out those eyespots!

By far the best story about this insect, though, is this:  If stung by the (rather bizarre-looking) rear appendage (shown above), the victim dies a painful death..... unless they have sex within the day.  I was surprised to learn that this is taken really serious by some.  When I brought this one back to the camp I was staying at, the staff got really anxious and irritable with me for "being so reckless".  Even though antivenoms for snakebites were available in a nearby town, they said, I would really be up the creek without a paddle if I got stung.

Other naturalists who have had similar experiences tell me that the machaca is actually harmless, but I was more than happy to let this guy go back onto his toxic tree.



-William Freedberg