Pictures of assassin: you can see some on healthy leaves, others on wilted ones

I think those are nymphs of a leaf-footed bug. They are bad and assassins are good. Leaf footed ones are suckers and hard to kill when older so kill them now if you can. They impart a poison into the plant and the plant declines.

I can't tell the difference. They are very similar at that age.

Very hard to tell apart. The forth photo in the assassin bug link above picture leaf footed bugs nymphs and are mistakenly ID'd as assassin bugs. I am no expert, but it looks like assassin bugs have a pointy end where the leaf footed bugs have a more rounded butt, although there are several species of assassin bugs. I wish there was a site that pictured them side by side to point out the differences. This is the closest I could find:

Assassin bugs nymphs

Leaf footed stink bug nymphs

Definitely they are leaf footed bugs: they have black marks and go in cluster. Do you think neem oil will do?

Neem is what I use on the nymphs.

AND they keep changing form as they age just to make us pull out our hair.

The wilting leaf would make me think they were sucking up a good meal too.

Well, I just learned something. I would have thought those were nymphs of Zelus longipes, the milkweed assassin bug, a very beneficial insect.

The adults are frequently confused with the Milkweed bug, Oncopeltus fasciatus, which sucks on flowers, but the (bad) milkweed bug has a broader, diamond shaped head, while the (good) assassin bug has a longer head and "neck" and narrower shoulders. Also, the nymphs of the (bad) milkweed bug look somewhere between a red aphid, and a little red beetle.

Milkweed assassin bugs will actually feed on the milkweed bugs if there aren't enough caterpillars to be had.

But looking at the photos now, I do see the difference... The slightly more bulbous abdomen and thicker hind legs do appear to make this a third type: The leaf-footed nymph...

I wonder how many times i've given *leaf-footed* bug nymphs a pass in my garden!

Thanks,

I killed a few huddled batches of LFH on both pomegranate fruit and plums over the last few days. They are typically sardined together on fruit where they suck on demand. No need to go anywhere else in search of a meal. Elsewhere in the garden there are lots of assassin bugs that are typically found on the green leaves of outer branches on bushes/plants/trees stationed like sentries on watch...waiting for some insect to fly right up to them, or at least close by where they will slowly ease toward them to snatch them before they fly off. They work alone as hunters, even though the same bush may have several all scattered about on their own preferred part of the bush. When I spot a huddled herd of the LFH, I usually go fetch a bottle of ready-to-deploy Windex and soak them real good and quick before they try to walk away along the twigs/leaves beside the fruit. They die quickly when at that young age from the Windex. If the fruit is not ready for harvest, I usually spray some plain water on it so the Windex won't affect it's health.

A leaf-footed bug nymph, genus Acanthocephala. Babies don't have wings yet.

http://bugguide.net/node/view/93

Squish it and look for its brothers. I keep a thing of soapy water for the babies but the adults are impervious to it. I found some babies on some old lettuce that was all seeding. They are dead now.