These guys are all over my gardens, but I'm especially concerned about their presence on my passionvines because I'm growing them specifically for the Gulf and Variegated Fritillary butterflies. Fighting off the wasps and the lizards to protect the butterfly eggs and caterpillars is work enough! Should I be worried about this bug as well?
This bug will not harm your vines, or any other plant for that matter; it is an assassin bug (Hemiptera/Heteroptera: Reduviidae) on the lookout for other insects to eat. Specifically, it appears to be the milkweed assassin bug, Zelus longipes - see http://tinyurl.com/ljlod7
uh-oh, that's him all right suunto, and when I looked up more info, it said that they consider earthworms, army worms, and other soft bodied insects as prey, which I'm afraid means they probably kill my fritillary caterpillars. Can anybody confirm this?
