Gerridae - Rheumatobates

Moved

Moved from Rheumatobates vegatus.

This is a female, as clearly shown in the fourth photo, so the key is not applicable and species id not possible.

… Matthew Pintar, 27 June, 2021 - 1:44pm

Moved

Moved from Rheumatobates.

… v belov, 31 May, 2015 - 5:13pm

Moved

Moved from ID Request.

… John S. Ascher, 20 February, 2015 - 11:00pm

Gerridae: Rheumatobates

This is definitely a gerrid, a Rheumatobates. There are 3 very small species of Rheumatobates in S FL; at least Rheumatobates vegatus is associated with mangroves. A better, closer shot of its rear end would help; this appears to be a male and may be R. vegatus.

… J. H. Epler, 10 February, 2015 - 12:38pm

Thanks for all comments

What are the other 2 species?

I wonder if there are any other previous records of the genus in the area that would help narrow it down--it may be that 1 or 2 of the 3 are not known from here.

Ill attach a magnified image of the rear end later. Any particular details that would help? I took like 100 pictures of this one.

… James Bailey, 2 May, 2015 - 7:32pm

not really

There are probably no other records of any of the 3 species for that area other than the ones I have listed in my 2006 identification manual for the water bugs of Florida (available through a link on my site - http://home.comcast.net/~johnepler3/index.html ). Please read there what I've written about the genus in Florida.

… J. H. Epler, 3 May, 2015 - 11:20am

Thanks for the link

Going by that key it favours vegatus over minutus especially with the prominent setae on sternite 9.

I don't know if you can tell from the image above but the antennae segmentation is perfect for vegatus as shown on the key. As a general estimate the 4th segment is the longest, the 3rd is 60% the length of the 4th, the 2nd is 40% of the 4th, and the first is about 75% of the 4th.

I've added another image to show this but as usual bugguide has ruined it on uploading so I hope it is clear enough.

… James Bailey, 3 May, 2015 - 11:51am

Gerridae?

I suspect that this is rather in Gerridae, since it resembles this individual:

From the guide, Veliidae doesn't seem like as good of an option to me.

… Even Dankowicz, 9 February, 2015 - 8:39pm

Perhaps

Before I visited Florida I too would have said Gerridae.

I encountered similar striders recently, but they were called as Veliidae:

… James Bailey, 9 February, 2015 - 8:48pm