Hyperaspis connectens ? - Hyperaspis connectens

Moved

Moved from ID Request.

… Abigail Parker, 20 April, 2011 - 8:51am

yup, H. connectens :)

And awwww, now I feel all warm and fuzzy and included!

… Abigail Parker, 20 April, 2011 - 8:35am

Hyperaspis?

… Blaine Mathison, 19 April, 2011 - 2:50pm

Hyperaspis

Well Blaine, 34 of these fellas in the guide pages. Of the 16 in
FL, 6 have images on those pages. I keyed this out for my benefit
using (1) to your Hyperaspis and from those six image
comparisons, I am going to choose H. connectens as well. Sure is
a good looking beetle. Maybe Ms Abigail will chime in also!

… Bruce Getty, 19 April, 2011 - 8:23pm

Much Closer Blaine maybe connectens....is the yellow head an option or a must or just a different one period... all the images except two have black heads

… James E. Garrison, 19 April, 2011 - 7:20pm

male vs. female

Generally, Hyperaspis males have white heads while females have black heads. Occasionally females have some white markings on the head. The only black-headed male Hyperaspis is H. jasperensis.

… Abigail Parker, 20 April, 2011 - 8:50am

I hope she is able to come. I would like to ask her which ref. she uses. I would call it a decora or a dentipes... Maybe even a floridensis but I have never seen one so...

… James E. Garrison, 19 April, 2011 - 12:56pm

my references

I live and breathe by Robert Gordon's 1985 monograph(1), which is somewhat outdated but covers literally hundreds of species...I never counted how many are in there! I go back to some of the older sources too (bearing modern taxonomy in mind); I will not part with my copy of J. Chapin's 1946 monograph on Hippodamia(2), which has over 200 images and a jaw-dropping number of dorsal pattern variations. I'm a newcomer to American Beetles because I couldn't afford the darn thing on my own, but finally got it as a birthday present :-D

For larvae, which I daresay are my specialty, I like B. Rees et al. for an overview(3), with Gordon & Vandenberg's articles on Cycloneda(4) and Coccinella(5) larvae as welcome expansions on those genera. My favorite BugGuide coup was getting Coccinella difficilis into the Guide based solely on a larval photo!

I also raise all the larvae I can find - which isn't that many in urban Philadelphia, but I did bring Exochomus childreni guexi larvae home from my trip to Texas last year and successfully raised an adult on Philly aphids!

… Abigail Parker, 20 April, 2011 - 8:47am

thanks.... I will have to get a copy of that first one def.

… James E. Garrison, 21 April, 2011 - 11:15am

hard copies are hard to find...

...in fact, I've heard that Gordon himself doesn't even have one! The one online is pretty good, though. I've downloaded the HTML for personal use and fixed up a lot of the scanned-text errors. (That happens to be what I do for a living in real life!)

… Abigail Parker, 21 April, 2011 - 11:18am

Real Life

I thought beetles were real life, but, I guess there might be
something else out there eh!

… Bruce Getty, 21 April, 2011 - 12:44pm

well...

real life until I am making a living off of beetles :-D

Speaking of which, everyone buy my field guide to eastern lady beetles in a couple years when I finish it :D

… Abigail Parker, 21 April, 2011 - 12:58pm

cool

I am redoing a version of Scarabs of Florida....maybe we will finsih around the same time

… James E. Garrison, 21 April, 2011 - 5:38pm