When I filled my milk jug with rainbarrel water yesterday I noticed that there were leaves floating around in the water. I scooped the leaves out and was shocked to find that the leaves were bound together in capsule form as if some thing had done it on purpose.
When I peeled away the leaf layers I found a weird mushy center with the consistancy of cooked acorn squash and a clear, skinny, egg-like thing sitting on top. The interior of the capsule seemed to be waterproof as there was no moisture inside it. What the heck do I have here?
C'mon, claypa, you don't have to let other people have a turn. You can go ahead and tell me the answer :)
I've tried searching for this... I really hope someone IDs it soon. It's so interesting to me for some reason. :)
Hahaha... my only guess would be one of the caddisflies - there's an entire order of these flying insects (Trichoptera) that have larvae that develop underwater, sometimes in little cases made of nearly anything they can find, and/or spin web-like cocoons. The wikipedia article calls them "underwater architects":
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trichoptera
But I always thought they lived in moving water? Really, I have no idea, especially about the squash stuff!
This is the first time I have been on this insect ID site and I cannot believe what I am seeing. This is exactly what I found inside a leaf on my ginger plant today. I have never seen a rolled leaf filled with this soft yellow stuff before. I also would like to know what this is. I am in Arizona.
This message was edited May 15, 2008 9:15 PM
I can't find any pictures but I think it's the larvae of Parapoynx rugosalis - a pyralid moth. Not sure how they got in the water barrel though.
Is your rain barrel under a tree or something of that type that maybe the "cases" could have fallen off of?
Thanks for the input guys. There is nothing hanging over my rainbarrel (I'm in a new neighborhood so there's no trees anywhere). But I do have a climbing rose next to (but shorter than) the barrel and I think that's what the cases are made out of. I just assumed my little friends were water bugs because it seemed as though something purposely constructed these waterproof cases and put them into the rainbarrel. I guess maybe I'll set up a little storage tank for them and wait for them to hatch.
These rolled leaves appear typical of the nest cells made by leaf-cutter bees (Megachilidae). These cells are packed with a pollen mixture that will feed the larva that hatches from the egg laid on the surface of the pollen ball. The bee that made these cells either chose a poor place to put them (and they fell into the rain barrel), or someone/something found them and placed them in the barrel. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megachilidae for more information on these fascinating insects.
Well, suunto, I could only find one picture of a leaf cutter bee and it's egg case but it does look like that could be it!
http://ipm.ncsu.edu/current_ipm/07PestNews/07News4/Megachile.JPG
I guess I might need to add my pictures to the bug files (once the things hatch and I know for sure) since there don't seem to be many good pictures available. I did find another set of egg cases but I didn't get a picture. There were about five of them joined together to form a 4" long tube. Weird.
My boss just added another piece to this puzzle! He reminded me that my rainbarrel has a spigot at the bottom and I have a 20" piece of hose attached to the end. He thinks that the insect (leafcutter bee?) is stuffing the egg cases into the end of the hose. This would explain why I thought they were coming from the rainbarrel because these things pop out whenever I get water from the bottom. I think this mystery might be solved!
