A dark-winged stick insect of the Medog forest
Stick insects rarely cooperate for photographs, mostly because you cannot tell they are there. This one, found in Medog, Tibet, on 7 August 2024, was the exception. It stayed perfectly still while I lined up a shot, which is either cooperation or the best camouflage ever devised.
This is Calvisia fuscoalata, a stick insect of the family Lonchodidae (order Phasmida). The species name is a quiet description: fuscus means dark and alatus means winged, so fuscoalata is the dark-winged one. Many stick insects are wingless, but the name of this one promises wings, and the family includes plenty of flyers.
Like all stick insects, it is a plant eater and a master of disguise. The whole order Phasmida takes its name from the Greek word for phantom, which is exactly what these animals are: they seem to vanish in plain sight. It is a long, thin body blending its long, thin body blending into the twigs and stems where it feeds at night. By day it freezes, and the only reliable way to find one is to stop looking for an insect and start looking for a twig that is slightly wrong: the angle of a leg, the length of a joint, something that does not quite match the branch it pretends to be.
Some winged stick insects flash brightly coloured hindwings when disturbed, a burst of colour that startles a predator long enough for an escape. Whether this dark-winged species does the same, I cannot say. It stayed calm through the whole encounter and let me take its picture, which is more than most insects manage.
