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Photo#373502
soft dark-brown+grayish pupa

soft dark-brown+grayish pupa
Madrona Marsh Preserve, Torrance, Los Angeles County, California, USA
February 23, 2010
Size: ~ 6 mm
Found this strikingly bi-colored ovoid in a dry crack near a moist area.

It has virtually no texture and was relatively soft to the touch.
It looks like a pupa, perhaps from a Dipteran or Hymenopteran (Velvet Ant?).

Images of this individual: tag all
soft dark-brown+grayish pupa soft dark-brown+grayish pupa

Moved

Moved
Moved from Unsolved bug-related mysteries.
I do think this must be a hymenopteran cocoon / pupal case, though not the same as the one you linked to.

 
Thanks, Charley !
We're slowly honing in ...

Could it be a hymenopteran pupa ?
I just found this image on BugGuide ...

Moved
Moved from ID Request.

Seems a shame to get rid of these, and I'm not sure where else to put them. If anyone has a better location, feel free to relocate them.

did you keep it?
it might not be able to be ided from cocoon alone

 
Thanks for your input, Jody !
And thanks for being part of the BugGuide family !

Like you, I usually operate in a conservation mode, and try to minimize my impact by taking only photos and not collecting specimens.
Pupa are a borderline situation.
If I find a pupa at a location I visit regularly, I sometimes collect it and rear it to find out what adult emerges, as I can release the adult in the same surroundings/ecosystem.
For other locations, I usually don't collect pupae, as the adult might be depending on a food-plant that might not be available at the location where I would release it after emergence.
Another consideration for not collecting pupae is that their well-being/survival might depend on the micro-climate (e.g., temperature and moisture range) of the location it was found in.

So, to answer your question, I did not collect this specimen.
And yes, I took a chance in the hope that the unusual color pattern and shape might be sufficient for identification.

 
phasmid egg?
It looks like it could be a phasmid (stick insect) egg ... not sure because I don't have it in my hand to look at, and I can't see the end ... but it does look to me like that is what it could be, and finding it lying on the ground could be a likely place to find one. But I am no expert so I could also be totally wrong.

 
Thanks for your original input, Andrea !
Not familiar with Stick Insect eggs, I poked around the Web a bit and found a few images of Phasmid eggs.
They were less ovoid, and more boxy shaped; usually with some asymmetry and a place that looks like the spot where the newborn can hatch from.
But it could be that other species have different shaped eggs.

I also read that Phasmid eggs can get as large as about 7.5 mm for Eurycantha horrida, which is one of the world's largest/heaviest insects.
It would be surprising to find Stick Insects, especially giant ones, at the Madrona Marsh Preserve, which is a 44 acre vernal pool preserve surrounded by the Los Angeles metropolitan area.
But I would love to find one !

 
unusual color pattern
Could the unusual color pattern just be from the moisture, maybe one end was wetter?

 
Good question, John.
The specimen was actually uniformly dry.
I could not feel any moisture on it.
It was in a seemingly dry sandy nook, away form potentially more moist areas.
So yes, the two colors appeared intrinsic to the specimen.

 
It's interesting, though,
that sand seems to be adhering almost exclusively to the dark half--right up to the line of demarcation.

 
Good observation, Ken !
The sand appears to indeed stick to the darker part on this photo.
I did however also take a photo from the other side, and there the sand also stuck to the smaller, lighter part.
I'll add that for reference.

Also, the specimen was found lying on its 'long' side (approximately oriented north-south), i.e. in a similar 'horizontal' orientation as the photo shows.
In other words, it was not positioned vertically with the dark end in the sand and the light end exposed.

I might add that the sand was not as dry as I made it sound above, as can been gleaned from the second image.
Furthermore, we've had rain a few days before the photos were taken, and it is likely that area got (quite) wet at that time.

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