Identification, Images, & Information
For Insects, Spiders & Their Kin
For the United States & Canada
Clickable Guide
Moths Butterflies Flies Caterpillars Flies Dragonflies Flies Mantids Cockroaches Bees and Wasps Walkingsticks Earwigs Ants Termites Hoppers and Kin Hoppers and Kin Beetles True Bugs Fleas Grasshoppers and Kin Ticks Spiders Scorpions Centipedes Millipedes

Calendar

TaxonomyBrowse
Info
ImagesLinksBooksData

Species Thyanta custator - Red-shouldered Stink Bug

Thyanta custator? - Thyanta custator Stink bug - Thyanta custator Unknown Insect? - Thyanta custator Stink Bug - Thyanta custator Thyanta custator nymph - Thyanta custator Madera Thyanta - Thyanta custator bright green with pink diamond - Thyanta custator Thyanta custator custator - Thyanta custator
Classification
Kingdom Animalia (Animals)
Phylum Arthropoda (Arthropods)
Subphylum Hexapoda (Hexapods)
Class Insecta (Insects)
Order Hemiptera (True Bugs, Cicadas, Hoppers, Aphids and Allies)
Suborder Heteroptera (True Bugs)
Infraorder Pentatomomorpha
Superfamily Pentatomoidea
Family Pentatomidae (Stink Bugs)
Subfamily Pentatominae
Tribe Pentatomini
Genus Thyanta
No Taxon (subgenus Thyanta)
Species custator (Red-shouldered Stink Bug)
Explanation of Names
Thyanta custator (Fabricius 1803)
Size
10-11 mm(1)
Identification
highly variable

overwintering forms are often, but not always, brown, e.g.:


T. custator accerra is the wide-ranging subspecies, while T. custator custator is restricted to the Atlantic coastal plains and can easily be dinstinguised from T. custator accerra based on the presence of a black anterolateral pronotal margin, also present in T. calceata.
Range
across NA (ME-BC to FL-CA to Guatemala) - Map (2)(3)(4)
Food
polyphagous (recorded from dozens of spp. in 14 plant families)(5); minor pest of crops(6)
Life Cycle
Remarks
There are good biological reasons for keeping T. custator and T. pallidovirens as separate species although they are virtually indistinguishable morphologically. For the longest time, in the older literature, the common Thyanta species (coast-to-coast distribution) was called T. custator. Then Herb Ruckes revised the group and decided that the common species (coast-to-coast) was actually T. pallidovirens, with T. custator limited to Florida. He also divided T. pallidovirens into three sub-species which he called accera (with black spots on the abdomen, mainly midwestern and northern in range), spinosa (with spinose humeral angles, mainly southwestern), and pallidovirens, found on the west coast, which didn't have the ventral spots or the spiny angles. As with any subspecific characters, they tend to breakdown in the areas of transition. Dave Rider then reversed Ruckes and decided that the common coast-to-coast species was T. custator, and would have done away with T. pallidovirens as a synonym except for a study of the chromosomes by Ueshida at U. Berkeley. The California populations have 2n=16, whereas the midwestern population has 2n=14. So I basically follow Rider who kept the species names. If it's from California and doesn't have spines or spots on the abdomen I call it pallidovirens. Everything else is T. custator. (D.B. Thomas's comment)
Works Cited
1.The Pentatomoidea (Hemiptera) of Northeastern North America
J.E. McPherson. 1982. Southern Illinois University Press.
2.Revision of the genus Thyanta Stål, 1862 (Heteroptera: Pentatomidae). II. Central America, North America, and the West Indies
Rider D.A., Chapin J.B. 1992. J. N.Y. Ent. Soc. 100: 42-98.
3.Checklist of the Hemiptera of Canada and Alaska
Maw, H.E.L., R.G. Foottit, K.G.A. Hamilton and G.G.E. Scudder. 2000. NRC Research Press.
4.Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF)
5.Pentatomoidea Host Index
6.Heteroptera of economic importance
Schaefer C.W., Panizzi A.R. (eds). 2000. CRC Press, Boca Raton, FL, 828 pp.