Decipulusnea

Description
Decipulusnea laqueulina, the usnea flytrap, hangs from tree bark. After thirty million years in Earth's time, this Usnea lichen relative ensnares small flying insects in its traps to gain an upper-hand in the high-competition tropical rainforest of northern and equatorial South America. Its modified apothecia shut around the prey item (such as the small fruit fly depicted) via turgor pressure and reopen after the prey has either been digested or escaped. Because of its digestive enzymes, the usnea flytrap primarily reproduces vegetatively. Stems that break off from the center can grow into new individuals if severed while in the right conditions. Decipulusnea laqueulina's competitive advantage is not negotiable in arid or temperate climates, as it requires warm temperatures and high humidity with a year-round supply of insects.

The conspicuous, blue-and-yellow ladybeetle Coerinella toxiclabes possesses a sickening and distasteful bodily fluid that deters all but the most desperate of predators. Indigenous to Central America and northernmost South America twenty-three million years in the future, the blue-and-yellow ladybeetle feeds exclusively on aphids that suck sap from plants in the milkweed family. The milkweed aphids accumulate cardenolides from the toxic sap of the plants. The toxic ladybeetles then fly, looking for contaminated milkweed bushes, and consume the aphids along with the poison that builds up in their bodies. The blue-and-yellow ladybeetle's colors warn of the toxins, which are more concentrated in the ladybeetle than in the aphids and can cause serious illness in high dosages. The blue hue is caused by a modification of the ladybeetle's normally-red pigment.

Genetic analysis suggests that the blue-and-yellow ladybeetle is distantly related to the Asian ladybeetle, Harmonia axyridis, which experienced rapid radiation after having been introduced to the New World during the onset of the twentieth century. The invasive species took over niches of much rarer insects and speciated as time took its course. A close relative of Coerinella toxiclabes is blue but has bright-red spots in place of C. toxiclabes's yellow spots.