Metallic Flea Beetles

Like I keep saying, it's the little things that often catch my eye - the beetles in this post are no exception. While they may be tiny [around 6mm T.L would be my guestimation], I was struck by their jewel like coat of armour. And there were a lot of them!. From what I've been able to deduce they emerge from the ground en masse to feast and reproduce, sometimes doing both at the same time ... thus they were making short work of the weeds and stems around the place - but didn't seem to really cause a huge amount of damage to the majority of plants. Although I could imagine a well tended veggie plot could get a work over in fairly short order ...

It's been unseasonably wet and I'm thinking that's whats triggered their, for want of a better word, eruption. But remarkably they seem to have gone. I don't know if they have died or simply moved on, but it doesn't make a lot of sense to me that they would relocate when there is still so much ready food to consume - most animals won't use energy unless they are compelled to right?.

Just another buggy mystery I guess ... though my money is on them having an extremely short adult life span.

Altica pagana

The plant didn't stand a chance

The real benefit of having such an explosion of insects is that it is sometimes a shot in the arm to other wildlife as it provides a bountiful supply of food which has a flow on effect [that whole circle of life type thing], so my hope is that even though this particular wildlife event seemed to be short lived we will see an increase in the number and varieties of other critters in the garden down the track - time will tell.