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   vayda (vayda@clubcyberia.co)'s status on Sunday, 24-Nov-2024 08:08:25 JST vayda

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   🚨 ARTHROPOD OF THE DAY 🚨
   
   The most common stick insect in Florida is Anisomorpha buprestoides (Stoll), the so-called twostriped walkingstick. Other names applied to it and to stick insects in general include devil's riding horse, prairie alligator, stick bug, witch's horse, devil's darning needle, scorpion, and musk mare.
   
   Anisomorpha buprestoides is a large, stout (for a stick insect) brown phasmid with three conspicuous longitudinal black stripes. Females average 67.7 mm in length; males are smaller and more slender, averaging 41.7 mm (Littig 1942). There is a strikingly distinct black and white color form that is found only in the Ocala National Forest scrub. Both forms suffer considerable discoloration upon death and pinned specimens are not nearly as distinctively marked as living individuals.
   
   Like all stick insects, Anisomorpha buprestoides is herbivorus, feeding on the leaves of trees and shrubs.
   
   The ability of this species to defend itself with a particularly odiferous secretion was reported as early as 1835, when Gray in describing the genus quoted an account by Thomas Say "...that when taken they discharged a milky fluid from two pores of the thorax, diffusing a strong odor..." Albert (1947) also described it as a "...rather thick, tenacious white material..." Blatchley (1920) described it as having "...a peculiar, though somewhat pleasing odor."