docshark Loc: Millersville, PA

Great shot Gary. Love that proboscis!
-Doc

sippyjug104 Loc: Missouri

Thanks, Bill. That may explain its appearance.

rhadams824 Loc: Arkansas

If the proboscis is wider than the antenna they tend to be predators. Thinner mouthparts are easier to use to penetrate plant tissue.

relbugman Loc: MD/FL/CA/SC

The original stack has exceptional lighting! Really like it. Wish I had some like it for my cricket publications.
Something to consider, if you are interested in a little studying or networking. You might try to find out (there are lots of possibilities to ask other UHHrs) what characters are most valuable in your specimens. Your superb close shots are perfectly suited for ID if pointed accordingly. Mark’s wing notes are an example in point. But specifically, in the original stack, the full proboscis would help greatly. (BTW, your later full view is dorsal, not ventral, and does make ID much easier.) Another example might be a close shot showing the veins in the membranous wing.
Re. the proboscis: Sometimes (actually, almost always!) body parts are ‘repurposed’ via evolution. An example is predaceous stink bugs vs. usual vegan Pentatomidae, most of which (including the predators) have long 4-jointed probosci (and incidentally, non-raptorial forelegs). Actually, reduviids have only 3 joints in their proboscis (a key character), usually relatively short, hard and curved. The first stack photo cuts off the last joint, so it appears only three at first glance, but does not imitate an assassin.
Don’t know quite what to make of part of Bill’s comment. Mirids could not be a ‘link’ unless including a fossil of the common ancestor of predaceous water bugs and reduviids, and I don’t think that exists in the record as yet, or ever will. Don’t think they are that closely related, either, but I can’t find my chart of the bug cladogram, lost among myriad (NPI) files, and I just don’t know. BugGuide lists each in a different Infraorder, between Order and Superfamily; that would make a living family impossible to be a ‘link’. https://bugguide.net/node/view/94266 down the page.

newtoyou Loc: Eastport

Doc
Poor wording on my part.
Referring to the way proboscis is in between strictly plant feeders and predatory.
Not realy evolution, adaptation.
I enjoy your comments,
Bill

relbugman Loc: MD/FL/CA/SC

One more (I’m loquacious today -- just ignore). On the proboscis. The sheath you see does not do any stabbing. It is composed of the labrum (at the base only) and labium – sort of the upper and lower ‘lips’ of insects in general. In many plant-eaters (and mosquitoes, too, BTW), the labium elbows back as the actual ‘stabbers’, the stylet-like mandibles and maxillae, enter the food; these may be very long to reach the necessary ‘veins’ in the phloem, and the elbowing out of the way of the labium allows more to penetrate more deeply. Conversely, in reduviids, the sheath is most often a nearly solid tube, often quite heavy, hinged at the basal joint but not elbowing at all. For these, usually just piercing the skin is enough, and the stylets, barely longer than the sheath, can be pushed out far enough to draw blood. I wonder if the heavy beak is an adaptation to hold the prey still while saliva paralyses it and the stylets work? The stylets work sort of like an electric knife, but with 4 parts thrusting independently with recurved teeth at the tips to hang on and a suction tube in the middle to … suck. I don’t know about the toe-biters and other aquatics, only that their ‘bite’ is very painful! Somehow, I don’t think they elbow. In this case, the heavy beak would be homoplasy or ‘parallel evolution’, not an ancestral shared trait.
Bob.

sippyjug104 Loc: Missouri

Thanks for the informative feedback and the educational value means a lot to me in better understanding what it is that I am finding. Designing critically controlled environments are my former specialty, not entomology or botany however I do enjoy the opportunity they provide for my new pastime behind the camera.

newtoyou Loc: Eastport

The way the predatory bugs puncture is interesting. Similar to Blackflies, with scalpels to open the skin. They lap, tho, not pierce.
I have been bitten by the Reduviid the Wheelbug. Palm of hand. Fast, and painful. Necrotic, like a Recluse bite. Weeks healing.
I kept them as 'pets'. Except for a mantid, they killed all comers. European social wasps down.
The beak seems to slide in.
Water scorpions are another biter. Hurts a few days and small sore for a while. As you know the venom liquifies flesh, rapidly.
Enjoy the day, Bob.
Bill