The picture below shows an insect nymph, but what is it going to turn into? Look out for the answer next week....
Did no one spot the deliberate mistake?! This is in fact an adult insect and not a nymph, but did anyone find out what it is?
The (adult!) insect is a pied shieldbug, or Tritomegas bicolor to be scientific. Shieldbugs are members of the insect Order Hemiptera (the True Bugs) and are related to squashbugs, plant bugs and froghoppers (among others). There are around 50 species of shieldbug in the UK and many are readily identifiable, making them a nice group with which to introduce yourself to entomology!
The pied shieldbug itself is a widespread and rather common species throughout the south of the UK, particularly southern England north to the Midlands. It is scarcer in northern England and doesn't occur in Scotland. It's favoured habitats are woodland edges and hedgerows, where it can be found feeding on it's main hostplant, white dead-nettle.
Interestingly, the female is known to show parental care towards the eggs, a trait exibited in other shieldbug species too. The shieldbugs (and indeed all the Hemiptera), have three life stages, a process known as 'incomplete metamorphosis'. Eggs hatch into nymphs, which often resemble the imago (adult) insects, going through a series of growth stages called instars, where they shed their rigid outer skins in order to expand in size. At the end of the last nymphal instar, they moult into the imago insect.
This strategy is shared with other insect Orders such as the Orthoptera (grasshoppers and crickets) and Odonata (dragonflies and damselflies) and is in contrast to 'complete metamorphosis', which involves four life stages of egg-larva-pupa-imago, which is seen in Lepidoptera (butterflies and moths) and Coleoptera (beetles).