Renia salusalis - Renia salusalis

Not Sure

Looks like the labial palpi curl back around the head a bit. I'm not sure if salusalis makes can have palpi long enough to do that. Maybe when feeding, they can curl back like this. Compare to images of yours that I moved from adspergillus to salusalis. Forbes (1954) mentions in the key that other Renia species have males with such short labial palpi at least not in NY. (Be forewarned that he mentions larvalis which is now treated as adspergillus.)

It may be that salusalis should be split based on DNA but both haplotypes have males with short stubby palpi. See BINs ACE9348, Florida, and ABZ6573, widespread. Both have examples of males which show the stubby palpi.

… Steve Nanz, 16 April, 2019 - 5:11am

I just took a look at the ori

I just took a look at the original and I think the shadows of the palpi are making them look longer than they are. I'll email you a tight crop.

… Ken Childs, 16 April, 2019 - 10:22am

Leaning toward salusalis

Thanks for sending the closeup. It confirms that I still don't know for sure but I am leaning more toward leaving it as salusalis. Your photo #1093943 shows just how short the palpi are. (Really nice shot, by the way.) The palpi are too short to actually curve back over the vertex. This one looks like it has slightly longer palpi but I just checked through all the species at BOLD and I found none with specimens with palpi nearly this short except for those in salusalis so sorry for the false alarm.

… Steve Nanz, 16 April, 2019 - 11:48am

Hugh McGuinness told me that

Hugh McGuinness told me that in addition to the short palpi, salusalis males also have a lot of fuzzy scaling around the palpi.

Hugh thinks salusalis is a lot more common the people realize and that most seen are misidentified as something else.

… Ken Childs, 16 April, 2019 - 11:55am

Yes

I agree on both counts. Yes, I saw the mention of the extensive scaling on the second segment and yes, I just moved about 20 images to salusalis which is likely less than half given I only moved males I was sure of.

… Steve Nanz, 16 April, 2019 - 12:17pm