Tiny bug nymph

[Bruce Williams]

Stony Stratford, Bucks. 13th February 2009. Size ~2mm.

I saw quite a few of these tiny bugs on Friday. Unfortunately I wasn't expecting to see anything so I only had my Canon A650 compact in my pocket. They were quite variable in colour from light straw to quite dark greenish grey. Being so tiny (2mm) the darker ones were very difficult to spot however most fenceposts had one somewhere so it was just a matter of looking carefully.

Here's three different individuals for identification:





Bruce

[Acutipuerilis]

Hiya Bruce,
You'll be lucky to get very far with this... It's a delphacid planthopper nymph, but beyond that it's very, very hard. The adults often have long and short-winged forms, and the colour of all four can be different; often, the male genitalia is allegedly the only way to ID them. I'm not convinced it's that bad, but I'm not going to hazard a guess at this one!

[Bruce Williams]

Thanks Joe, I'd guessed that this might prove difficult to identify with any confidence. Following your high level id I did some Googling on delphacids and found some very similar looking images so I'm sure you're right with Delphacidae

I'm assuming (from the size and look as much as anything else) that this is probably an early instar of "whatever-it-is".

Bruce