Abrosoma gibberum

Abrosoma gibberum

Abrosoma gibberum is a stick insect in the family Aschiphasmatidae.
Pair of Stick Insects/Phasmid At a glance, you would think there is only 1 Phasmid in the picture, but it is a pair/couple, mating! This Stick Insect/Phasmid - Abrosoma gibberum is from the sub-family of Aschiphasmatidae, very small in size. Females are around 3.5 - 4cm whereas the Males are around 2.5cm in size. Despite this size, they are still not the smallest Phasmid in the world yet, but probably within top 10 smallest. This species are quite interesting as when adult, and sometimes at sub-adult, Males are known to 'ride' the Female for the rest of his life, unless disturbed. The Male is very thin/slender and might be missed if you don't take a closer look. Like most species under the sub-family of Aschiphasmatinae, they have the capability to spray from glands behind their heads as a defensive mechanism. In this picture, the Female is also holding and egg while being mated by the Male. Abrosoma gibberum,Cameron Highlands,Geotagged,Malaysia,Phasmid,Stick Insect,Summer,Tanah Rata

Naming

Abrosoma gibberum Brock & Seow-Choen, 1995

References:

Some text fragments are auto parsed from Wikipedia.

http://phasmida.speciesfile.org/Common/basic/Taxa.aspx?TaxonNameID=1199242
Taxonomy
KingdomAnimalia
DivisionArthropoda
ClassInsecta
OrderPhasmatodea
FamilyAschiphasmatidae
GenusAbrosoma
SpeciesAbrosoma gibberum
Photographed in
Malaysia