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3. Some Familiar Philippine Macroinverts

A small monsoon forest stream in the Philippines looks familiar.


This looked like a willow but I passed it off (didn't look close) as a convergent. But, it turns out that there are some willows here.


Turn over cobbles and it still looks familiar!:

A Heptageniid

Rhyacophila

Neophylax(?)

Perlid

If that is Neophylax I suspect you have a real sweet one :-) I don't know Philippine caddis at all but Neophylax south of Japan would be a scoop! More likely goerid.

I dunno who it is. The ballast stones made me think Neophylax. But I see Goera also has them.

I now wonder if Neophylax' summer aestivation I observed in NY is an adaptation to being at the southern end of a northerly distribution? These Philippine guys were out and about. It is "winter" here, so to speak.

Nice Paul, thanks for posting. Looks like you have found some more "comfortable" waters to explore. Have you come across any cool beetles or Hemipterans yet?

I haven't seen any Hemipterans where I live, but my mother is an octogenarian and my dad was a Legionaire.

Is your name Paul?

Sometimes I'm really not sure. Sorry, Paul!

Very nice photos, Paul.

Hey, did you fish?

Ha! Thanks for that, Bruce, or whatever you go by now. Hey…my Dad just became on Octo, and my Mom … was a Legionaire. OK I'm spooked now.


Yes Eric! As cool as they are I wasn't going to post em as I'm already pushing the limits here. But since you asked...

Nothing for scale here but this guy was big and heavy! Apparently, local kids tie a thread to them and fly them around. They sound like RC helicopters.


These guys reminded me of a face card from a playing card deck. They were everywhere on the forest floor. Only thing more abundant was their exuviae.


I photo’d this recently molted guy too. Looks like either an adult (wing pads) or a different species from the “face card”. There was another pigmented one, an all rusty one I didn’t photo.


We also caught this guy:


And found that there are ant lions here too. When my son drops ants in to watch, I always warn him about boy-eating pit monsters.


And then we found one!



No. There were fish rising in the evening in a deep flat pool though. But all my small-stream FF gear is back home in storage. I had packed some heavier gear for the sea and brackish but didn't expect to be fishing small streams. My son and I did catch some tiny fish by hand that looked like mosquitofish (Gambusia) but probably weren’t. Gambusia is invasive here in some parts of the islands though.

Oh .. I added a photo to the OP.

Cool Rhinoceros beetle! Very interesting hemipteran too. I know they have some interesting weevils there too. Man, I'd be like a kid in a candy store there...thanks for posting!

Paul...We used to do that to June bugs when I lived down in Norfolk VA as a kid.

Great pics! Looks like you are settling in there some.



Eric...What we going to do with this guy? I'd suggest tossing him into the drink, but he's more than capable of doing that on his own! :) I've seen it done.

Spence

I like having someone around who is a bigger smartass than myself. If it gets too bad I can take him out into the grouse woods of Potter County and leave him there and see if he finds his way back. But for now I vote we keep him! ;).


Paul, keep posting those bug pics (any pics really)! I for one, want to see what you find.

Any mango worms there or are they only an African parasite?

Will do, Eric. Hope to see more cool stuff. Visited a forest area yesterday and, despite it being the dry season, you couldn't walk very far without seeing something cool. Tough to cover any ground with all the oohing and ahhing. My son however, wants to run (he's 12 and is run by his cerebellum, not unlike a beagle being run by its olfactory bulbs). So, we have to pry our eyes from the ground and run!

Matt, from what I read, no. They are from central African only. We do have a few other things here, but not like exists in Africa and the Amazon. Virtually all our parasitic issues are mosquito born. Dengue is not uncommon during the rainy season, Malaria prevalence varies across the region (we visited one high prevalence, aggressive strain, area a few months ago, taking an anti-malarial antibiotic during). Filariasis is another that we plan to avoid. DEET is the way to go here. Risk vs benefit.

We don't even have as many venemous snakes here as some other tropical regions either. However, I've found only 2 snakes so far. The first was a paradise tree snake which is mildly venemous (not dangerous to humans). I also found a Philippine cobra dead in the road. These have possibly the most deadly venom per volume of any snake in the world. So, we don't leap on snakes like we did back home. Back home I used to quip, "When you dive on a snake and they bite you, well, you got 'em!"