This weekend, while sitting on my back porch between thunderstorms, I noticed a small fuzzy patch of something on one of the deck chairs. From a distance, I thought it might be a small patch of lichen; this wouldn’t be odd, as the chairs are fairly speckled with various small lichens. But as I got closer, part of my potential lichen started to move! 

What I had found was a cluster of newly hatched spiny assassin bugs (Sinea spinipes). Although incredibly tiny (each individual nymph was only a couple millimeters across), the general assassin bug morphology was evident, as were their spiny front legs. 

The group of nymphs were still gathered closely around the now-empty eggs. Spiny assassin bugs lay small clusters of tube-like eggs, often in double rows as seen here. The eggs are glued to a stable substrate (in this case, my chair) and are capped with a circular operculum, from which the first instar nymphs will emerge after approximately 2 weeks of incubation. The nymphs pictured here must just hatched right before I noticed them. Firstly, because the nymphs were still clustered relatively close to the eggs and had not yet dispersed. And secondly, in a laboratory account of the life history of this species, researchers note that the head, thorax, and appendages are initially reddish and the abdomen initially yellowish, darkening to their normal browner coloration within 2 hours – these individuals still had bright yellow abdomens and reddish heads and thoraxes. 

As their name implies, assassin bugs are predators, often waiting motionless and well camouflaged in flowers or foliage for their prey to pass by. To feed, assassin bugs puncture their prey with their sharp “beaks,” inject saliva that softens and begins to digest the innards, and then sucks out the liquefied, pre-digested tissue. Not exactly my idea of a 5-star dinner, but it works for the assassin bug.