''Jadera haematoloma'', the red-shouldered bug, goldenrain-tree bug or soapberry bug is a species of

true bug Hemiptera (; ) is an order of insects, commonly called true bugs, comprising over 80,000 species within groups such as the cicadas, aphids, planthoppers, leafhoppers, assassin bugs, bed bugs, and shield bugs. They range in size from to around ...

that lives throughout the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...

and south to northern

South America South America is a continent entirely in the Western Hemisphere and mostly in the Southern Hemisphere, with a relatively small portion in the Northern Hemisphere at the northern tip of the continent. It can also be described as the southe ...

.Mead FW, Fasulo TR
Scentless plant bugs, ''Jadera'' spp.
''Featured Creatures''. July 2007. Last accessed 2008-08-08 It feeds on seeds within the soapberry plant family,

Sapindaceae The Sapindaceae are a family of flowering plants in the order Sapindales known as the soapberry family. It contains 138 genera and 1858 accepted species. Examples include horse chestnut, maples, ackee and lychee. The Sapindaceae occur in tempera ...

, and is known to rapidly adapt to feeding on particular hosts. The species is often confused with

boxelder bug The boxelder bug (''Boisea trivittata'') is a North American species of true bug. It is found primarily on boxelder trees, as well as maple and ash trees.

s and lovebugs.

Description

''J. haematoloma'' are typically long and wide, though the short-winged form (brachyptera) usually is long. Color is mostly blackish (sometimes, bluish grey, or purplish, or bright red immediately after molting) except for red eyes, "shoulders" (lateral margins of

pronotum The prothorax is the foremost of the three segments in the thorax of an insect, and bears the first pair of legs. Its principal sclerites (exoskeletal plates) are the pronotum (dorsal), the prosternum (ventral), and the propleuron (lateral) on ea ...

), and costal margins and dorsal part of abdomen.

Nymphs A nymph ( grc, νύμφη, nýmphē, el, script=Latn, nímfi, label=Modern Greek; , ) in ancient Greek folklore is a minor female nature deity. Different from Greek goddesses, nymphs are generally regarded as personifications of nature, are typ ...

are mostly red with a black pronotum and wingpads. All appendages are blackish.

Distribution

For most of the twentieth century, little was known about the range of ''J. haematoloma''. Reports showed breeding populations to be present in Florida, Kansas, Colorado, Texas, Arizona, California, Alabama, Illinois, North Carolina, Missouri, Colorado, Iowa, as well as Georgia, South Carolina, Virginia, Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Royal Oak, Michigan. A study published in 1987 showed the distribution of ''J. haematoloma'' and "revealed the close correspondence of records for the bug with the ranges of the soapberry plants that serve as the insects native hosts." In addition, isolated examples have been reported as far north as Minnesota. Outside of the United States, ''J. haematoloma'' is found south through Central America and the West Indies to Colombia and Venezuela. Although native to the

New World The term ''New World'' is often used to mean the majority of Earth's Western Hemisphere, specifically the Americas."America." ''The Oxford Companion to the English Language'' (). McArthur, Tom, ed., 1992. New York: Oxford University Press, p. 3 ...

, the discovery of ''J. haematoloma'' populations in

Taiwan Taiwan, officially the Republic of China (ROC), is a country in East Asia, at the junction of the East and South China Seas in the northwestern Pacific Ocean, with the People's Republic of China (PRC) to the northwest, Japan to the nort ...

in 2012 marked the first finding of the species and genus in Asia.

Evolution

Two populations in southern Florida are particularly notable. The more southern of these two populations feeds on the seeds of a native host vine balloon vine ('' Cardiospermum corindum''). This vine produces capsules of a fairly uniform size, which adult ''J. haematoloma'' feed on by inserting their mouthparts (beak) through the capsule's exterior and into the interior seeds. In the mid-1950s, a related

southeast Asia Southeast Asia, also spelled South East Asia and South-East Asia, and also known as Southeastern Asia, South-eastern Asia or SEA, is the geographical United Nations geoscheme for Asia#South-eastern Asia, south-eastern region of Asia, consistin ...

n tree, the Taiwanese Flamegold (''

Koelreuteria elegans ''Koelreuteria elegans'', more commonly known as flamegold rain tree or Taiwanese rain tree, is a deciduous tree 15–17 metres tall endemic to Taiwan. It is widely grown throughout the tropics and sub-tropical parts of the world as a street tree ...

''), was introduced as an

ornamental plant Ornamental plants or garden plants are plants that are primarily grown for their beauty but also for qualities such as scent or how they shape physical space. Many flowering plants and garden varieties tend to be specially bred cultivars that i ...

. It escaped domestication and naturalized. Significantly, the Flamegold was colonized by ''J. haematoloma'', though its capsules are smaller and the seeds less deeply embedded than in the balloon vine. In a seminal paper published in the scientific journal ''Genetica'' in 2001, it was shown evolution had taken place in this colonizing population of ''J. haematoloma'' on the Flamegold in a period of only a few decades. They showed that the beak length, which in the

ancestral An ancestor, also known as a forefather, fore-elder or a forebear, is a parent or (recursively) the parent of an antecedent (i.e., a grandparent, great-grandparent, great-great-grandparent and so forth). ''Ancestor'' is "any person from whom ...

type was about 70% the length of the body, was only about 50% the body length in the insects that had colonized the non-native tree, though the size of the bugs themselves had not changed. In addition, they found that:Carroll, S.P., Klassen, S.P. & Dingle, H (1998): Rapidly evolving adaptations to host ecology and nutrition in the soapberry bug. Evolution and Ecology, 12, 955-968.

...derived bugs mature 25% more rapidly, are 20% more likely to survive, and lay almost twice as many eggs when reared on seeds of the introduced host rather than those of the native host. Fecundity is also twice as great as that of ancestral type bugs reared on either host, while egg mass is 20% smaller.

References

External links

Detailed species account of ''Jadera haematoloma''

on the UF / IFAS Featured Creatures Web site {{Taxonbar, from=Q6121426 Serinethinae Hemiptera of North America Insects described in 1847