Face to face with a sub-mm insect

May 20, 2015 • 10:02 AM UTC

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140x Magnification

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laksiyer

Human observer of life. https://sukshmadarshin.wordpress.com

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I was investigating the pollen of a really interesting mutant Azalea (I shall describe that in a separate post). While scanning the field of the slide, my eyes fell upon this immature insect. With the naked eye, it looked like a little spec and so I couldnt spot it in the first place. I showed it to my local expert and he felt it was an immature beetle. The insect fits in one field of the foldscope low power lens, suggesting that its length is about a mm or so. Many aspects of the internal anatomy can be seen, such as trachea, gut contents and muscles, albeit transiently. If anyone in the forum can recognize this insect species, I will be grateful. Note that you are seeing the insect belly up, i.e. from the ventral surface. You can also see the proboscis of the beetle. It looks like a curved dagger. I have now seen this quite a few times and at time get a strange impression that we are looking at each other.
We often think of bees and butterflies as pollinators, but when one sees such an insect covered in pollen, you know that there are many other players in the great pollination exercise.