One day in south central Florida, Julia and I were walking along a trail through a hardwood hammock when I spotted a beautiful leaf-footed bug (Coreidae) egg.  While I was admiring it, I heard a loud buzz overhead, and I looked up to see a large leaf-footed bug alight several feet above us.  Julia managed this shot of it with the 20x (or so) optical zoom on her little point-and-shoot:

The photo was good enough to identify it as Acanthocephala declivis, a decidedly southeastern species.  I thought it was reasonably likely that the egg belonged to the same species–it certainly looked like an Acanthocephala egg.

It was getting late and we had lots of exploring to do, so rather than take the time to assemble my macro setup, I collected the egg and photographed it in the tent that night.

The next night, the bug had developed (or the…