Large Milkweed Bug

Fields, meadows, gardens, and pastures wherever milkweed plants (Asclepias spp.) are present.

Herbivorous, feeding primarily on the seeds, sap, and tissue of milkweed plants using piercing-sucking mouthparts.

Diurnal and gregarious, often feeding and mating in large groups on milkweed seed pods. They absorb cardiac glycosides from milkweed, making them toxic and unpalatable to predators, advertised by their bright orange-red and black warning coloration (aposematism).

Harmless to humans, pets, and structures. They do not bite or sting. In the ecosystem, they serve as a specialist herbivore on milkweed and are used extensively in scientific research as model organisms due to their ease of laboratory rearing.