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Photo#850918
Psyllobora - Fungus-eating Lady Beetles? - Psyllobora renifer

Psyllobora - Fungus-eating Lady Beetles? - Psyllobora renifer
Lenexa, Johnson County, Kansas, USA
October 2, 2013
Size: ~2.5 mm
Came to a MVL/blacklight setup in a woodland by a tall grass prairie remnant.

Moved

 
Thanks!
Thanks!

I'm quite convinced this is renifer
but let's move to genus for now.

 
The following year
I had an image ID'd as renifer the next year, it sure looks like this one. Can you revisit it, thanks!

https://bugguide.net/node/view/1022044

 
Fascinating!
I've seen and photographed several of these tiny ones this year. I will need to blow them up on the big computer screen and check them out!

Range extension?
Renifer was thought to be very uncommon, but in recent years it has been found in many regions, sometimes in abundance.

Visually this is a perfect Psyllobora renifer, in elytral pattern, and in the pronotum. I have not seen any evidence that 20-maculata can ever have this appearance. They can be confluent, sometimes heavily so, but the method in which the markings have formed here is not very suggestive of that species.

 
Range extension
I did think this looked a lot like P. renifer, and a range extension would not surprise me at all. Even in as short a time as the past 7 years that I've been studying coccinellids here, BG records have shown that species from more southern/southwestern and arid areas have been extending their ranges northward and eastward. (Chilocorus cacti is one obvious eastward-moving example, there are BG records from Florida.)

Moved

yes - P. vigintimaculata
Very confluent, but it has to be P. 20-maculata, that's the only sp. of Psyllobora in your area.

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