Insect on hops that looks like caterpillar

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cmlnmbs Ashland, WI(Zone 4b) Sep 12, 2011

Insects confuse me, there's so many species. I've searched for this one but have come up empty so far. There are a dozen (at least that I can find) crawling around on my 1 year old hops. At first glance I thought it was a caterpillar but then noticed the six legs. I'm in northern Wisconsin, and while we've been having some 80+ degree temperatures in the daytime, we keep edging closer to frost at night. I'm a little worried they're finding a host to bed down next to for the winter.

The picture shows the line-ruled paper, so it's a small bug(ger). Good? Bad? Anyone shed some more light on it? Thanks!

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cmlnmbs Ashland, WI(Zone 4b) Sep 16, 2011

I'll post a follow-up, in case anyone was interested.

Concerning the specimen I previously photographed, I left it in a jar for a few days and looked closer at it today, four days later. It had changed. It anchored itself to the glass and the outer shell had started to drastically change into something that more resembled a lady bug. With a new search image in mind, I quickly learned that the lady bug group goes through five nymph stages, of which I apparently captured the last stage.

We have, what we colloquially refer to as, the Asian Lady Beetle (Harmonia axyridis) that invades our homes in the fall. I'm not sure I've ever seen an actual, native, ladybug. With all the Asian Lady Beetles in the past years I'm surprised this is the first time I've noticed a portion of its life cycle.

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