| Latin Name | Observation Date | Location |
|---|---|---|
| Lema praeusta | May 14, 2026 | Purulia, Natore, Bangladesh |
On the afternoon of May 14, I went to my garden and suddenly my eyes caught sight of a blade of grass. I saw a beautiful little insect sitting there. Its head is bright reddish orange and its hind wings are dark blue or black. Without further delay, I immediately took several macro photos of it with my camera.
Later, when I searched for the insect's image on Google and the iNaturalist app, I found out some information about it that really surprised me. Today, I thought I would share that information with my blog friends.
Name, family and species: The common English name of this beautiful insect is Leaf beetle. In zoology, its scientific name is Lema praeusta. It belongs to the Chrysomelidae family and is a species of the Lema genus.
Size: They are very small in size. They are only 6 to 7 millimeters long. But the bright and contrasting color contrast on their bodies easily catches anyone's eye.
Home and Habitat: These beautiful insects are native to our tropical Asia region. They are found in abundance in Bangladesh, India, China and Southeast Asian countries. They usually prefer to live in agricultural lands, orchards and weedy bushes.
Diet: Their diet is quite interesting. They are completely vegetarian and survive by eating leaves. They mainly eat the soft green part of the leaves and make the leaves look like a web or skeleton.
Reproduction: Their reproduction rate is quite good. Studies have shown that a female insect can lay an average of 224 to 270 eggs in her lifetime. If the eggs hatch, it takes 6-7 days for the larvae or babies to emerge. Another full-grown insect lives for about two and a half to three months.
Beneficial and harmful aspects: The most wonderful aspect of this small insect is hidden in its beneficial and harmful properties.
Disadvantages: They sometimes cause minor damage by eating the leaves of crops like brinjal, sweet pumpkin, gourd or turmeric. Therefore, farmers often consider them as 'minor pests' or harmful insects.
Benefits: Their real magical aspect is that they work great as an environmentally friendly 'biocontrol agent' for rice, corn or soybean fields.
These insects completely destroy the harmful weeds like kanaibashi or similar weeds that grow in the field by eating the leaves of those weeds. As a result, the weeds in the farmer's land are naturally suppressed.
However, these days, due to the excessive use of chemical fertilizers and herbicides in the field, these wonderful beneficial insects are dying out quickly, which is really a big loss for the environment.
If I hadn't read this, I wouldn't have known that there are so many qualities hidden within these small creatures of nature.
Have you ever seen such a beautiful beetle in your garden or neighborhood? Let me know in the comment.
I learned about them from various sites including iNaturalist, Wikipedia and Google.
(All posts are written in Bengali and translated into English using Google Translate.)
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| Camera Used | Samsung SM-G973F |
|---|---|
| F-Stop | F2.4 |
| ISO speed | ISO |
| Focal length | 26mm |
| Flash | No |
| Editing app | MIX |
| Photography | ( Lema praeusta) |
| Photographer |  |
| Location | Purulia, Natore, Bangladesh |
| Link to original community |
|---|
| https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/362026554 |
| Latitude | Longitude | Map Link |
|---|---|---|
| 24.3360 | 89.1134 | https://www.openstreetmap.org/?#map=12/24.3360/89.1134 |