2015 bug collection

Green beetle, which I suspect is attracted to my sunken garden site, Its a predatory insect, feeding on small insect, slugs, snails, and other animal matter.

My favorite predatory insect, the jumping spider.

Next is the Thick headed fly(Physocephala texana) According to the Adubon society, the food of this insect is dependent on nectar while their larva is a parasite to sand wasp. Although my findings for this particular fly shows it also hunts for aphids(as depicted on my youtube channel).

According to the Adubon society: the European Earwig feeds on vegetables, orchard fruits, garden flowers, as well as mites and insect larvae and pupae. Given my observation of their eating habits, they totally devastated three of my winter squash( which I suspect was not doing so well on its own anyway due to poor location) started going after my thriving squash, without panicking, I merely observed what they were going after exactly, the conclusion was that they were mostly gathering on the 4 week old leafs, so not so worried after all, they were soon victims of nocturnal spiders anyway.

Thick headed fly

According to the Adubon society: Eastern sand wasps depend on nectar and larva eat various kinds of flies. Attracting these guys have not been difficult, merely by planting the flowers they like, such as Sweet clover can attract these guys to the garden.

And drone flies.

I learned that this type of spyder depends on dense shrubbery plants or in my case, lots of sunflower habitat to make their homes in, which of course the garden grew thick with this year, excellent pest control Ehh?

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According to The Adubon society: Gaint robber flies feed by pouncing on resting insects like flies or bees(:3) and is seen resting on hedge mustard flowers( as seen in photo).

Something I have noticed, is that sunflowers attract these black parasitic wasps( another addition to bug control).

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An unknown but beautiful fly.

Then the Tachina fly (Trichopoda Pennipes)
Habitat: meadows and crop fields.
Range:Maine to the Gulf states, west to Californian, North to Washington, east to Ontario.
Food:Adult may drink nectar. Lava is internal parasite of true bugs.
This tachinid fly is often encouraged for biological control of squash bugs, stink bugs, leaf-footed bugs, cotton stainers, and other plant bugs.

Colorado potato beetle
Habitat: Mountain meadows and potato fields.
Range: Most of the United States and Canada.
Food: Potato Foliage and wild members of the nightshade family.

Last but not least, the amazing praying mantis.