My Garden Residents

You all well know that i have a hoya garden. But long ago i also have an orchid garden, not well cared for that succumbed to pests and diseases. Plants are like any living thing too, when their resistance is low they succumb to illnesses. Food chain is like that, there is always someone waiting for its prey to be vulnerable, then they attack. Obvious predators are the pests or insects, but there are microscopic problems that not visually seen unless the attacked  symptoms are already obvious. Then the host becomes very weak and die. 

Those posted below are not necessarily pests of my garden plants. 

 The fruit fly above is obviously eating a lot of 'whatever' things on the surface of an orchid petal. Its mandible goes left and right as if completely cleaning the area. I really don't know what it is doing, but it always do that for all petals it alight into.

What i directly know about them is as pest of fruits. They lay their eggs on the still developing fruits, and their larvae grows when the fruits ripen. This is a very bad pest of our major fruits.

This plant hopper is always seen also with my hoya plants. They are always on the stems and leaves. They pierce plant parts and sip the juices. However, i think its damage is not very high on my hoyas. Its length is only greater than 1 centimeter.

 The white spider is also a perennial resident of my hoya garden. They are seen mostly under the leaves or inside the flower umbels. When provoked they go down to the ground fast through their lifeline thread, coming out of their bodies. When the environment stabilizes again, they climb up through that lifeline again to the plants. The photo above is a Hoya imperialis, where it blends well with the whitish corona. I provoked it to transfer to the mauve background.

There are many of them in my hoyas, but they are a bit inconspicuous unless you seriously look for them. They also camouflage very well with the whitish color of the plants, as inside the umbels and under the whitish corolla. 

It is actually a friend of the plants. They are there to ambush anything that visits the flower. However, they don't seem to distinguish if the insect is a good one or bad. Their main intention is to get food. It has very long forelegs that can hold preys much much larger than its size. I've seen it lugging a moth and another time a big bee. Its technique is to immediately bite the prey on the neck, inject its venoum that paralyzes its prey. So even a big prey will not be able to resist when injested with the paralyzing venom. Sometimes, i also get scared at it as it might get so scared and attack my hand. Fortunately, i haven't been stung, i also take care for i don't know its magnitude of attack. 

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