It's A Leaf! - NH 098

NH 098

Walking Leaf

Category: Phasmids

Family: Phylliidae

Sorry guys, but I'm not going to be able to post a spider today and there hasn't been any the past few weeks due to the holidays. But to make up for it I'm posting the newest addition to the Sholesonian which I actually just got today. Now it's not a spider, rather it belongs to the order Phasmatodea which also includes the very cool walking sticks. This particular species is Phyllium pulchrifolium (which if I understand my Latin the species name means beautiful foliage) though according to Wikipedia the species is also known as Phyllium bioculatum, but for now I'm sticking with the P. pulchrifolium classification.

This one, like my giant orb weaver, comes from Indonesia - specifically Banten, West Java and was collected last year in January of 2010. Now apparently these guys do have wings, though I guess that shouldn't come as much of a surprise. They can also be different colors depending on their environment, so a community that lives on brown-leaves trees they all might be brownish whereas this particular specimen obviously lived on green-leaved trees; however do not take this as they can change colors. You can tell this is a female specimen because of the short antennae, whereas males have much longer ones.

These guys typically only live for about four to seven months. And as ironic as it may be, they camouflage themselves to protect themselves from predators but they eat leaves themselves. Their reproduction methods are also interesting. The females can lay eggs with or without male fertilization. If laid without a male all the offspring will be female whereas it requires a male to fertilize the eggs for any males to be born. Check out these walking leaves in more detail. And to boot, I've taken a couple of cool highly magnified photos of the head and 'spine.'