| Italian Striped-Bug (Graphosoma italicum (Müller, 1766)) |
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Scientific name: Graphosoma italicum (Müller, 1766) Common name: Italian Striped-Bug Other names: Minstrel Bug French name: Punaise Arlequin, Graphosome Italien, Scutellère rayée, Pentatome rayée. Order: Heteroptera Family: Pentatomidae Wingspan : 8-11 mm Biotope: Found on Umbelliferae, mainly in dry and sunny locations. Geographic area: South of Europe, missing in the North. Observation period : May to September. |
You can easily identify the Stink bug with its red colour and the four to six black stripes running all along the body. The legs are black with reddish marks. The scutellum, at the back of the pronotum almost totally covers the abdomen. The red and black colours protect the Stink bug by warning off the predators, informing about its very bad taste. |
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Italian Striped-Bugs are insects which are easy to identify. In the Mediterranean regions you can also find Graphosoma semipunctatum. This last one shows rows of spots on the pronotum instead of stripes. |
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Mating. I observed these Stink bugs on Umbelliferae, just before they were chopped by ugly rotary mowers. We should stop this slaughter and go back to more nature friendly cleaning methods of road sides. |
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You can also find Stink Bugs in my garden. Here is one perched on parsley. |
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The larvae of the Italian Striped-Bug go through 5 stages to reach the adult state. I think we have a larva here in its fourth stage of development. We can already clearly see the black stripes on the pronotum and on the scutellum. It will need two more moults to reach the adult state with its beautiful red colour. The fifth stage larva will already slightly turn pink in colour. |
André Bon December 2021