Diet

• Adults and nymphs: Primarily seed and fruit feeders, using their piercing-sucking mouthparts to obtain nutrients from seeds and developing plant material.

• In natural habitats, it is considered a generalist seed feeder, rather than a species restricted to one particular host plant.

Range

• Neopamera bilobata is a seed bug in the family Rhyparochromidae, subfamily Rhyparochrominae, tribe Myodochini.

• It has an exceptionally broad distribution throughout the Americas, extending from Canada and the United States through Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean to South America.

• In Zihua it is fairly common, particularly in disturbed areas, gardens and places with abundant herbaceous vegetation or fruiting plants.

Habitat

• Found in a wide variety of open and disturbed habitats, including fields, gardens, agricultural areas, grasslands, woodland margins and other vegetation-rich environments.

• It is particularly associated with ground-level vegetation, fallen plant material and seed-producing plants.

• Around Zihua, suitable habitat would include weedy areas, gardens, cultivated vegetation, forest edges and other disturbed habitats.

Size

• Adult length: approximately 5–6 mm.

• Small, somewhat elongated and generally brown to dark brown, giving it its common name, dirt-coloured seed bug.

• One of the most useful field characteristics is the conspicuous pale triangular marking near the centre of the forewings.

• The terminal antennal segment is generally uniformly dark, which helps distinguish it from the closely related Neopamera albocincta, whose terminal antennal segment has a pale basal area.