Winter's Zebra Assassins
If you live in Ohio, you would probably agree that this winter has been a strange one. In the southeast, we haven't gotten much snow (much to my own chagrin). While this stops me from sledding down the available hills on campus, the mild weather at least means that you're more likely to encounter insects than you would be under two feet of snow. A few weeks ago, on January 27th, a friend brought me a nice little surprise: This little dude clad in zebra stripes is the assassin bug known as Pselliopus barberi . This species, like other assassins, is predaceous (just check out that beak!) and this one overwinters as an adult, explaining why it was found in January. It's not too large, just about 14 millimeters, but it's quite striking. There are two species in this genus that you're likely to encounter often in Ohio: P. barberi and P. cinctus . P. cinctus is slightly smaller, and is a duller orange color. Before getting this one, I hadn't bothered too much with i...