A Lantern Bug on a (Christmas) tree

One of my fave Hong Kong Wildcreatures, always such a pleasure to find and see them, and now also one of my fave Christmas ornaments! Read on…..

First off, I just had to take a picture of this wonderful, unique Christmas tree decoration/ornament. (Full disclosure, Claire of Lion Rock Press is a friend and gave me one of these as a present, but I then bought three more, also to regift, as they are so cool).  It looks just like the real thing, and the pics on their website do not do it justice….

You can find more about them and also lots of other Hong Kong themed items at this link:

https://www.thelionrockpress.com/products/glass-decoration-lantern-bug?srsltid=AfmBOoqGNOO7jFAWjVaH_sxf_nfVjsC84CNY2JrrQ9TVigxsXMZCLN1W

Two Lantern Bugs (Pyrops candelaria) align together on a dried leaf as they begin to mate, their ornate rostrums and mosaic wings glowing in the soft light. Their extravagant colours serve as both warning and disguise — a rare glimpse of courtship in one of Asia’s most striking insects.

Canon EOS 5D Mark III

100mm f2.8 L Macro IS USM Lens. 

1/90s  f/8 ISO400. Handheld.

These beautiful, intricate bugs can often be found on tree trunks around Hong Kong, particularly lychee and longan trees, on which they feed.  I have taken numerous photos of these delightful insects, but I had never seen them mating before. It was a chance “rescue” where I helped recover these drowning mating insects - that had fallen from a Longan tree - from a friend’s swimming pool using a leaf, and as they continued to carry on oblivious to everything, I was able to observe their uninterrupted mating, and take their picture. Location: Ng Tung Chai, near the bottom of the waterfalls, on the Shek Kong side of Tai Mo Shan, in the New Territories of Hong Kong.

This extraordinary insect has a head that extends into a hollow structure resembling a rhino horn often nearly as large as its body, six legs, extremely varied and brilliant contrasting coloration, the mouth of a mosquito, and often stays for generations on the same tree. Its fantastic appearance is matched by the myth that the head structure was luminous at night. Carl Linnaeus coined both common and latin names to illustrate the supposed fact, adopting the statement without question from a lady entomologist in 1690. By the time the error was discovered, both names had stuck.

 Its eating habits are equally interesting, as it uses its sharp rostrum to puncture trees, fruit, and plants in order to get a juicy meal of sticky sap. Since sap is high in sugar and low in the other nutrients needed for insect development, it needs to eat a lot. But then the large amount of sugar causes a problem for the lantern bug; it solves this by allowing the excess sap to drip from its body as honeydew. So you can sometimes find moths or even geckos licking the behinds of these strange beasts.

This bug goes through an incomplete metamorphosis from egg to nymph, which simply grows into a larger version as the adult. 

SEE THEM: Often found on tree trunks— particularly lychee and longan trees. Look for them around the Peak, near Lady Clementi’s Ride. Seen all year, there are peaks of sightings in mid spring and autumn.

This picture is of a dead one, but showing their wings, that you can see when they fly…..

And these last two are of similar bugs that I found in Thailand….