Now that the recent heavy rains have rained themselves I'm finally seeing the Santa Fe Dam soft chaparral spring back to life. Detectable insect biomass is still pretty sparse and rare right now but the upright-winged hoppers have started hatching, I've bagged 3 early instars so far (1-2 per hour, which is the usual encounter rate for upright-winged hoppers and most other soft chaparral bugs on a good day's hunting). They were feeding on Salvia mellifera and Artemisia californica but I've moved them to pieces of Cuscuta subinclusa since dodders (by virtue of being fast-growing and parasitic) are highly nutritious.
Gonna tag them as Dictyssa obliqua for now because based on locational context from last summer's adults that's probably what they are, even though they're probably physically unidentifiable till adulthood.
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