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Kingdom: AnimaliaPhylum: ArthropodaClass: InsectaOrder: HemipteraSuborder: HeteropteraSuperfamily: CimicomorphaFamily: Reduviidae
Assassin Bugs and Wheel Bugs
The largest
predaceous
family in the Hemiptera order is that of the assassin-bugs, wheel-bugs, and soldier-bugs, the Reduviidae. More than fifty types belong-ing to this family are represented in this country, but so little are the bugs collect-ed or even noticed by amateurs (or professionals either, for that matter) that butfew of the species can be said to be at all familiarly known.The Reduviids have an unmistakable look of
ferocity
, small and insignificantcreatures as they are. The eyes are usually large and protruding, looking like apair of shining black beads set on the small outstretched head. The beak, 3-seg-mented, is strong, sharp-pointed, and large for the small head that carries it, andit projects forward in a suggestively eager way. While the ground or body color ofthe bugs is usually black, they are often marked with blood-red and sometimeswith yellow. The wingless young are in many species all red.The sting of the insect is poisonous because of the injection of saliva into thewound, and this poisoning, which makes such a wound often very painful andsometimes rather serious to man, must be paralyzing and fatal to the more usualinsect victims of the assassin-bugs.A member of this family is the wheel-bug, Prionidus cristatus, especially com-mon in the South. The full-grown bug is about an inch long, black, and has on itsthorax a thin convex crest with nine teeth. This is the "wheel." The little jug-shaped eggs are laid in six-sided single- layered masses of about seventy, whichare glued to the bark of trees, or on fence-rails, the sides of houses, etc. Theyoung are blood-red, with black on the thorax. The wheel-bugs are specially ben-eficial because they are among the few predaceous insects that prey on the well-protected hairy caterpillars that infest our shade and orchard trees.Excerpt From: American Insects By Vernon Lyman Kellogg (public domain)
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