Lantern Bug (Pyrops candelarius)

Lantern Bug

The lantern bug, especially that of the genus Pyrops, is a favorite among collectors due to their bright patterns.

The lantern bug, also known as “lantern fly” is a very old insect. They have been around for more than 300 million years.

The order of insects in which lantern bugs belong to can be found in three continents – Asia, Australia, and America.

Lantern bugs belong under the fulgorid genus of Fulgora and Pyrops.

Lantern bugs of the Fulgora genus can be found in Central and South America while those under the Props genus can be found in southeast Asia.


Size, shape and colors of the lanter bug.

The lantern bug can grow from 1.5 to 3 inches long from head to thorax and has a wingspan of about 2 to 2.5 inches wide, depending on the species. It has a long beak, called its rostrum, which it uses to suck the juice out flowers and fruits. The lantern bug is an herbivore.

Lantern bugs are called thus because of their bright usually contrasting colors. Their actually coloring varies for each genus but the colors are bright enough for them to earn their name, despite the fact that no lantern bug actually emits any light at all.


Lantern bugs all belong under the order called Hemiptera.

There are actually around 80,000 species belonging under the order. Aside from lantern bugs other insect under the Hemiptera order include cicadas, aphids, shield bugs, etc. Insect belonging all have the distinctive characteristic of having a proboscis with a beak (rostrum) that is designed to pierce tissue and suck fluids, usually sap, out. True bugs undergo metamorphosis several times and the nymphs look a lot like the adults.

The Order Hemiptera is further subdivided into the sub-orders Heteroptera, Auchenorrhyncha, Sternorrhyncha, and Coleorrhyncha. The last three sub-orders where once classified under one sub-order, Homoptera, until since they shared the same wing structure and position of their rostrum. Lantern bugs belong under the sub-order Homoptera.

Spittle bug/froghopper

Spittle bug/froghopper
[昆]沫蝉,吹沫虫
small leaping herbivorous insect that lives in a mass of protective froth which it and its larvae secrete

The froghoppers, or the superfamily Cercopoidea, are a group of Hemipteran insects, in the suborder Auchenorrhyncha. Traditionally, most of this superfamily was considered a single family, Cercopidae, but this family has been split into three separate families for many years now: the Aphrophoridae, Cercopidae, and Clastopteridae. More recently, the family Epipygidae has been removed from the Aphrophoridae. These families are best known for the nymph stage, which produces a cover of frothed-up plant sap resembling spit; the nymphs are therefore commonly known as spittlebugs, or spit bugs, and their froth as cuckoo spit or snake spit. The final family in the group, Machaerotidae, is known as the tube spittlebugs because the nymphs live in calcareous tubes, rather than producing froth as in the other families.
Nymphal form of spittlebug encased in foam for protection and moisture.
The froth serves a number of purposes. It hides the nymph from the view of predators and parasites, it insulates against heat and cold, thus providing thermal control and also moisture control. Without the froth the bug would quickly dry up. The nymphs pierce plants and suck sap causing damage, and much of the excess filtered fluids go into the production of the froth. A few species are serious agricultural pests.

Adult froghoppers jump from plant to plant; some species can jump up to 70 cm vertically: a more impressive performance relative to body weight than fleas. The Frog Hopper can accelerate at 4000 m/s^2 over 2mm as it jumps. Many species resemble leafhoppers, but can be distinguished by the possession of only a few stout spines on the hind tibia, where leafhoppers have a series of small spines. Members of the family Machaerotidae greatly resemble treehoppers, due to a large thoracic spine, but the spine in machaerotids is an enlargement of the scutellum, where treehoppers have the pronotum enlarged. Members of the family Clastopteridae have their wings modified to form false heads at the tail end, an anti-predator adaptation. Many adult Cercopidae can bleed reflexively from their tarsi, and the hemolymph appears to be distasteful; they are often aposematically colored

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