Tortoise beetle

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a bug sitting on top of a green leaf

Tortoise beetles are any member of more than 3,000 beetle species that resemble a turtle because of the forward and sideways extensions of the body. Tortoise beetles range between 5 and 12 mm (less than 0.5 inch) in length, and the larvae are spiny. Both adults and larvae of some species are destructive to garden plants and sweet potatoes.

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a colorful bug sitting on top of a white surface

My husband also had an encounter with this iridescent turtle beetle. And finally I have found its ID. It is the Geiger Tree tortoise beetle! As described in the reference, formerly Physonota calochroma floridensis. Size: 8-11 mm. Live adults are brilliant lime green with a black spot in the middle of the pronotum. In this book is mentioned that adults change colors, from wine-purple, green, to red-bronze or gold. In fact, these colours are constantly changing in the same specimen but when…

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a close up of a bug on a leaf

The tortoise beetles are an artificial grouping of tribes within the leaf beetle subfamily Hispinae. In past classifications, they have been variously placed as a family ("Cassidae") or a subfamily (Cassidinae); when it was recognized that this group was not monophyletic, it was split and the resulting tribes were incorporated into the Hispinae. Some of the tribes that are considered "tortoise beetles" in the historic sense are the Cassidini, Dorynotini, Hemisphaerotini, Ischyrosonychini…

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