Buglife

Beetle Larvae

“This product will dissolve certain types of plastic” reads the label on the back of the DETAN ROLL ON – an Ecuadorian brand of repellent in the shops here – under the casual title ´precautions´. The active content is a longish chemical chain (interestingly no deet) which seems to be suitable vile as to put most, but no all, mosquitos, flies, midges and other bugs off their dinner. If there´s an aspect of jungle life you can´t ignore its the bugs. And despite going through a bottle of Detan Roll On a week, we are both littered with bites in various states of scratchedness.

But as well as the wicked are the wonderful. The diversity of insects here is amazing. Antlines a meter wide, legions of hairy catapillers, of furry caterpillars, swarms of butterflies and moths of every colour and pattern and all sorts of other amazing bugs (I wont mention the spiders).

Down by the river at night, the fireflies (actually a family of beetle with a luminous patch) are like a meteor shower happening around you with their larvae glowing in the pools at the river’s edge. Huge beetles romp, yet even on the smallest of bugs you can see even tinier mites at work.

I have posted a few photos here we´ve managed to get – for more photos, painstakingly categorized into family see Amanda Brown´s (a previous manager at Las Tangaras) link https://picasaweb.google.com/108895004808976967463/InsectsOfLasTangarasMindoECUADOR?authkey=Gv1sRgCPXm0seph7iS8AE#