Dytiscidae, Hydroporinae, but what genus? - Bidessonotus

Moved

Moved from Uvarus.

Thanks Tim. From Dr. Epler's comments on my other post in this genus, sounds like the safest place for this one is the genus page. But thanks for getting me to the correct one.

These images were taken with my old optics setup. Hopefully I'll soon post some of the same and different species from the new and significantly improved setup.

… Tim R. Moyer, 17 January, 2009 - 8:00pm

Bidessonotus pulicarius

seems to be best fit...if my eyes are not fooling me, I see a transverse occipital line behind the eye and a pair of lines flanking the metacoxal line that converge anteriorly at the mesocoxa (characterizes genus). The other similar species is B. inconspicuus and both can only be reliably separated by examination of the male genitalia..but B. pulicarius is slightly smaller (2 mm and under) so yours might well be this species.

… Tim Loh, 17 January, 2009 - 1:05pm

Moved

Moved from Predacious Diving Beetles.

… Tim R. Moyer, 9 December, 2006 - 10:24am

Bidessus, or close

Hi Tim, note the sulcus on pronotum and elytra - excludes Hydroporus or similar genera.

… Boris Büche, 8 December, 2006 - 7:44am

Thanks Boris!

My Downie and Arnett reference doesn't point out that Hydroporus is without the sulcus, but now that you did, I can see that that's the case. Initially, I looked at Bidessus, but without any available pictures of the 3 species listed for my area, this guy didn't seem to fit. Since then I found this web site, Dytiscidae of Great Smoky Mountains Nat. Park, which has photos of 2 of the 3 Bidessus and better descriptions. Based on this information, no other genus seems to fit. However, I didn't find anything to let me confidently determine the species although it doesn't fit B. granarius

I also may have misled myself, with a couple of my own prior IDs to Bidessus which don't resemble this guy but may really have been incorrect! Please take a look at

if you would and let me know what you think. I'm wondering if that one could actually be Bidessontus inconspicuous. If I have it right the taris should actually appear to be 5,5,5.

… Tim R. Moyer, 9 December, 2006 - 10:23am