We are not afraid of predators, we are transfixed by them, prone to weave stories and fables and chatter endlessly about them, because fascination creates preparedness, and preparedness, survival. In a deeply tribal way, we love our monsters…

~Ecologist, E.O. Wilson

I took a stroll through the Garden after work one day this week, looking for some flowers to photograph as a backdrop for a needed poster. I wanted a flower off to one side, with black background for the lettering.

I stopped at an ironweed plant, a great nectar source for all sort sorts insects, and took a few quick shots. I saw some movement on another plant, and went over to grab a pic of a pollinator…

The skipper was moving from flower to flower, probing for nectar. I moved to get another angle, and noticed something odd dangling below another flower…

It was another silver-spotted skipper, apparently hanging by its proboscis. How did that happen? As I bent down to look, I noticed something on the underside of the ironweed flower – a small insect – a jagged ambush bug, genus Phymata. This is one of the sit-and-wait predators often seen lurking on flowers, waiting for an unsuspecting pollinator to get too close. Most predators of this sort are camouflaged to help conceal them while they wait. This one appears to look more like the developing seeds in the flower to the right in this picture, than the bright purple of the flower itself, so I am guessing it waited on the underside and grabbed the much larger skipper when it landed. I gently touched this tiny tiger to get it to move up for a better look.

Ambush bugs are stout-bodied predators with enlarged, raptorial front legs, somewhat resembling those of a praying mantis. They look like some sort of alien tank out of a science fiction movie to me.

When a prey gets close enough, they lash out and grab it with those legs and stab it with their powerful beak, injecting toxic saliva with digestive enzymes. As the insides of their prey dissolve, the ambush bug sucks up the nutrients, leaving an empty shell of its victim behind. I am guessing this skipper had just settled in for a nice sip of nectar when terror struck, leaving its proboscis stuck down in a flower tube which led to the scene I discovered.

The bug soon walked out onto the stem for an better view, so I snapped a few more images, When I looked at them on my laptop this morning, I noticed something else…

During the entire sequence of shots of the ambush bug, it had another insect (or perhaps an insect larva) crawling around its body. Was it a harmless hitchhiker, or some parasite? A quick web search showed another image of an ambush bug with what looks like a small lacewing larva hitching a ride, and my somewhat fuzzy image looks similar. Coincidence or collaboration? I guess I will try to find this little guy again next week and see if I can get a better image of the hitchhiker for identification and clarification of this mystery.