Giraffe weevil building nest

This is the fourth species of giraffe weevil / leaf rolling weevil I have found in Malaysia. I even found a female building nest! These have been IDed as: Korotyaevirhinus necopinus orientalis,  Legalov, 2003. (ID credit: Andrei)

I took too many shots of these weevils....but who can resist such cuteness? :P


Cute :)


Yes, the weevil ate that much!


When nature calls? No, it's not what you think.


I found these giraffe weevils on this host plant:

 Host plant: Shorea.sp., Family: Dipterocarpaceae (ID credit: Nor Effendi)


The leaves


A newly completed nest


When I found her, she just started rolling the leaf! The main vein of the leaf had already been severed. The blue font indicates the time stamp. 2:44:39 pm.


A female with her newly completed nest / nitidi. 

The last image taken of her with the nest was 3:51:04.

I created this short clip from all the stills I captured with my point and shoot / compact camera. Again, the text in blue indicates the time. The whole process took about one hour.



I guess what's missing now is a family picture. I mean, mating shot. I have seen so many of this species but never one with long neck, therefore I suspect that both males and females of this species have similar neck length.The final confirmation came when I saw a picture of a mating pair posted by someone on Facebook! You can view the image here.

Check out the other three species here:

http://orionmystery.blogspot.com/2010/08/giraffe-weevil-and-its-host-plant.html

http://orionmystery.blogspot.com/2011/03/spiny-giraffe-weevils-and-host-plant.html

http://​orionmystery.blogspot.com/​2011/05/​another-giraffe-weevils.htm​l

Beautiful Eurybrachyidae laying eggs

I found this beautiful Eurybrachyidae planthopper, laying eggs on a tree trunk. I spent about 2 hours observing, photographing and taking movie clips of her and the egg laying process :)

IDed as Chalia pulchra (GRAY, 1832). Family: Eurybrachyidae. ID credit: Jerome Constant.

The tree was Endorspermum malaccense.

Location: Selangor, Malaysia.


GIF animation of the egg laying process at different stages:

Please wait for the gif animation to load!





At one point, an assassin bug nymph came quite close to her, but retreated. Later, an ant came. You see only the ant here but not the assassin bug.


The assassin bug I mentioned previously.





I roughly counted and there were about 160 eggs.