Common Green Shieldbug

The Common Green Shield has a bright green colour early in the year, which darkens to nearly bronze as the year progresses.

Species introduction

At a glance
Latin name: 
Palomena prasina
Family: 
Stink Bugs
Family Latin name: 
PENTATOMIDAE
Category: 
Insects other

Species description

Species description

This common bug has a bright green colour early in the year, but this darkens to nearly bronze as the year progresses. In adults, there is a dark brown area at the rear end, where the hind wings cross.

Adult Common Green Shield bugs overwinter and emerge at springtime. Their five-sided bodies are distinctive. Eggs are laid on the undersides of leaves, and these hatch into nymphs that don't yet have this five-sided shape. Instead, they have a rounded shape when they appear in June, and they moult four or five times, with each new development changing their shape from round to five-sided. As this progresses throughout the late summer and autumn, their wings appear and develop from tiny wingbuds to fully-formed wings.

Species photographs

Larger photograph(s) (click to magnify)

Details

Species family information

Most members of this family are plant feeders, and the cemetery is therefore very good habitat for them. The family name comes from the appearance of a five-sided body.

Category information

Insects evolved in the Ordovician from a crustacean ancestral lineage as terrestrial invertebrates with six legs (the Hexapoda). This was the time when terrestrial plants first appeared. In the Devonian some insects developed wings and flight, the first animals to do so. An early flying group was the Odonata from the Carboniferous, the damselflies and dragonflies, which have densely-veined wings and long, ten-segmented bodies. They are day-flying carnivores, with an aquatic larval stage, so are commonly seen flying near water. The carnivorous larvae are called nymphs. Odonata species are short-lived, damselflies surviving for 2-4 weeks, dragonflies for up to 2 months.

Some insect groups in the Cretaceous co-evolved with the flowering plants, and they have had a close association ever since. These groups are the Hymenoptera (bees, wasps, and ants), the Lepidoptera (butterflies and moths), the Diptera (flies), and the Coleoptera (beetles). The diversity of beetles is astonishing. Of all the known animal species on the planet, one in five is a beetle!