I love the bug world in my cacs
Pic 1- the cabbage worm you see at the bottom of the cluster is dead, just a husk. It had eggs lain in it by a tiny parasitic wasp, and then the wasp larvae ate their way out. Above the caterpillar corpse is a silky clump of parasitic wasp cocoons; they’ll hatch in a couple weeks, and the babies are welcome. The thing I can’t figure out- was the yellow cocoon clump made in a patch of yellow variegation on purpose, like as camouflage? Or was that a coincidence
Pic 2- these painted leaf hoppers are very nice looking, but they’re unfortunately not welcome on my plants
Pic 3- a neutral visitor, I think? This isn’t the best example of it that I’ve ever seen, but this wood nymph moth has a natural camouflage of looking like bird droppings. Some of these guys look pretty convincing
Pic 4- like most of us, I get a bunch of spiders on my cactus, and so some spider egg sacs. I really liked this one because the jumping spider that laid it used plant matter from a tree overhead to disguise it a bit. You can see the egg sac hidden behind the flower bits there
Pic 5- happy hatched babies a couple weeks later. These guys emerged at night & the mom was present. I took this pic in the morning when the babies were easier to see, and by then they had already begun to disperse. I hope a lot of them stayed very local to my plants