by Nate Yuen | Feb 28, 2016
I was thrilled to stumble on Hawaiian yellow-faced bees — nalo meli maoli — on lehua flowers on Hawaiʻi Island. The native bees are small — less than a quarter inch long — and look more like black-brown wasps that have a yellow face. Honey...
by Nate Yuen | Oct 1, 2015
One of the amazing denizens in the Hawaiian forest is the carnivorous caterpillar Eupithecia. Eupithecia is a large genus of moths with over a thousand described species worldwide whose caterpillars feed on plant material. But when the moths found their way to...
by Nate Yuen | Dec 23, 2014
We were thrilled when Ryan Chang spotted a really cool brown, white, and orange moth — the native Hawaiian Sphinx Moth. The Hawaiian sphinx — Hyles calida — is an endemic sphingid moth found on Kauaʻi, Oʻahu, Molokai, Maui and Hawaiʻi. There...
by Nate Yuen | Sep 12, 2014
I was thrilled when Aaron Miyamoto invited me to his home to photograph koa bugs. For nearly six months, koa bugs (Coleotichus blackburniae) had become almost an obsession. I learned that koa bugs seem to prefer formosan koa trees (Acacia confusa) — a tree...
by Nate Yuen | Jan 29, 2014
I was lucky to get some close up shots of the Piano or Giant Hawaiian Dragonfly — Anax strenuus. Also known as the Giant Hawaiian Darner, the dragonfly is said to be the largest in the United States. The dragonfly has a wing span of about 4 inches which is...
by Nate Yuen | Aug 14, 2013
We searched the native forests of Oʻahu to look for ʻakoko planthoppers, a curious-looking insect with a distinctive horn on its forehead longer than the bug itself. The Hawaiian Islands are home to 22 species of ʻakoko — Chamaesyce — 15 of which are...
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