Little mottled green and orange treehopper with a magnificent red-tipped horn, on an oak twig watching over a few dozen little stripy red, black, and white nymphs

She guard ❤️

Oak treehopper moms are the best. I know I've posted about them here before but I love that they stay and watch over their children from egg til they all disperse near adulthood. They're just good lumps.
#InvertebrateParenthood

Also I made a tag for such things, #InvertebrateParenthood

Mottled green and orange treehopper with a magnificent red-tipped horn, standing guard over a twig with rows of her eggs embedded in it

They're back for the coming spring 🥹

Oak treehopper moms stay and guard their eggs and growing nymphs until they're ready to disperse and I love them so much 💚
#InvertebrateParenthood

Large slender dark gray wasp with red legs, large ball of wet clay in her mandibles which she's placing with care at the base of a little tan urn she's made as a nursery

Day 13 of my 2025 Favorites: Ms Podium rufipes and her nursery!
These large hard-to-photograph potter wasps stock their nursery with cockroach nymphs, and I managed to shoot this one putting the finishing touches on her creation. 🖤
#InvertebrateParenthood

Very large grey wolf spider absolutely covered with tiny wolf babies, just her face peering out from under the living shawl

Wider view of the scene, the creature is basically a horde of babies supported by long legs

Top view of the lass and her brood

Parents will sometimes express they feel somewhat lost or invisible when raising young children, and this wolf mom just might understand. She narrowly missed #Arachtober but that's on me for not finding her sooner and sharing her and her hundred+ babies with y'all 🖤
#InvertebrateParenthood

Pale green centipede curled up on top of a few of her pink children, with 20+ more scurrying over each other beside her

Scolopendra viridis with all her babies! 🥹
#InvertebrateParenthood makes me happy.
#InverteFest #LegsLegsLegs

Large slender black wasp with red legs, tending a brown igloo-like pasty case for her egg. Her antennae are curled tightly at the end

The lass on top of her egg case giving a final inspection

Ms Podium rufipes, a cockroach hunting wasp who stocks her baby's nursery with roaches. I found her adding another layer of pine resin to the nest (she's a relative of the mud-daubers). Large, gorgeous, badass. 🖤
#InvertebrateParenthood

A tiny red wasp with black abdomen, caught in the act of ovipositing into one stinkbug egg in a batch. The eggs are pale blue translucent spheres, 14 visible in a double row.

That time I found a tiny eupelmid wasp borrowing a few stinkbug eggs in my yard 🥹
#InvertebrateParenthood

Light brown lynx spider perched atop her egg sac, which is covered in little pale green stripy babies

Face of one of the tiny children on the leaf, a white stripy face with big eyes and legs bunched around her. To her right there's more babies, on the egg sac

Being fierce protective parent does not stop when your spiderlings hatch 🤎
Hamataliwa helia moms are the best, always. And the little green miniatures are adorable.
#InvertebrateParenthood #EmotionalSupportSpood

Tiny pale brown wolf spider with big almost jumping spider eyes, and a dozen ish pale babies clinging to her back

Ms Trabeops aurantiacus, a miniscule bug-eyed wolf species, with her dozen or so babies on her back 🥹
#InvertebrateParenthood

Dark red and brown ant mimic ground spider, on a palmetto frond, attaching the tiny piece of pine bark over her little white egg sac with silk.

Little ant mimic spider mum (Micaria sp) carried a small piece of pine bark a couple feet up a palmetto frond to tie it down with silk over her egg sac 🥹 I thought she was carrying a snack at first. #InvertebrateParenthood is such a sweet thing to see. They do their best. ❤️

Spiky orange-brown lynx spider clutching her lumpy white pillow of an egg sac, under an oak leaf

Ms Hamataliwa helia, hiding out under a leaf with her lumpy egg sac before a thunderstorm this evening ❤️
#InvertebrateParenthood

Leggy translucent green jumping spider with a bright orange hat, legs stretched over a patch of her little round green eggs. The scene is back-lit through a green oak leaf

Leggy Green Jello Monster, guarding her eggs 💚
#InvertebrateParenthood

(Lyssomanes viridis, magnolia green jumping spider)

Spiky tan lynx spider, hugging a large lumpy white pillow full of her eggs underneath a branch

Saw a Hamataliwa helia egg case sitting unattended, which isn't normal, and looked around the shrub until I found the mum, who seemed to have lost her dragline to her egg sac and was running frantically up and down a lower branch trying to find it. Reunited her with it. 🤎
#InvertebrateParenthood

Tiny #Theridula #gonygaster mum hard at work :)
#spider #InvertebrateParenthood #macro

Shiny red cobweb spider with a pointy booty which has a yellow leaf-like pattern on top; she's resting with legs splayed on the underside of a green oak leaf, with 18 tiny bright red spiderlings around her learning how to spood

Tiny Chrysso albomaculata mum, and all her silly little miniatures 🥹
#InvertebrateParenthood

Reddish-brown crab spider, curled up atop her little white pancake of an egg sac on a dry oak leaf

Crab lass protecting her egg sac (she turned up in leaf litter I was poking through, and I gently covered her back up) 🥹
#InvertebrateParenthood

Slender red pseudoscorpion with beefy pinchy arms, and little yellow eggs glued to the underside of her abdomen

#InvertebrateParenthood ❤️
Pseudoscorpion mums are very cute, carrying their little babies around. Always a favorite sight.

#InvertebrateParenthood

They're baaaaaack 🥹

Mottled white and reddish brown lynx spider perched atop her little white pillow of an egg sac, with a half dozen of her pale yellow and green babies hanging out on the sac. Two of which are at her feet peering up at her as if in adoration

#InvertebrateParenthood
One of my favorite encounters ever, this lovely Hamataliwa helia mum, and some of her newly-hatched miniatures at her feet 🥹

Large reddish brown wolf spider mum with a dozen or so little red babies riding on her back. She's halfway out of her burrow, awaiting snacks

#InvertebrateParenthood
Geolycosa mom with all her babies still hanging out (shortly before I fed her a cricket) ❤️