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Home » Guide » Arthropods (Arthropoda) » Hexapods (Hexapoda) » Insects (Insecta) » Beetles (Coleoptera) » Adephaga » Ground Beetles (Carabidae) » Harpalinae » Pterostichitae » Chlaeniini » Vivid Metallic Ground Beetles (Chlaenius) » subgenus Chlaenius (Chlaenius subgenus Chlaenius) » laticollis group (Chlaenius laticollis group) » Chlaenius erythropus
Photo#1141951
Chlaenius erythropus - Chlaenius erythropus - female
Copyright © 2015 Sean Perez

Chlaenius erythropus - Chlaenius erythropus - Female
Demopolis, Alabama, USA
September 15, 2015
Size: 21mm
This beetle was collected in a propylene glycol
Pitfall trap. The relatively large size, the sinuate pronotum, and the blue color of the head would indicate erythropus.
tag · login or register to post comments
Contributed by Sean Perez on 20 September, 2015 - 2:04am
Last updated 22 September, 2015 - 10:00am

Chlaenius erythropus
is one of just a handful of carabid species easy to identify reliably within their genus solely on body length.

Welcome to BugGuide Sean! I'm glad you're starting to post nice resolution images of dorsal habitus that are maximally expandable for consultants/editors to see diagnostic detail. Sometimes ventral habitus or pronotum close-ups become important. Since your profile concentrates on ground beetles, please be aware that I offer my service for accurate species determinations of difficult specimens via "photo-vouchering" noted in my profile. Good luck with your inventory work in Alabama.

p.s. If it is important to you Sean, I can e-mail you a complete list of the 439 caraboid species confirmed in Alabama per the 2012 catalogue by Yves Bousquet. The list does not include the five species of Anillinus nor the two tiger beetles recently assigned "AL" in the post-2012 Caraboid Registry.
… Peter W. Messer, 20 September, 2015 - 8:53am login or register to post comments

 
Thanks!
Thanks very much for the warm welcome to this site! I have been using the photos here on Bug Guide to help with my IDs for the past few months. I figured I should also share my photos with the associated tentative species identifications. Win-win for us all!

Of-course, being an amateur in entomology, it would be greatly appreciated to get feedback on any of the photos I post which will feature a question mark at the end of each title, as I am sure some will need corrections.

I would greatly appreciate that list of carabid species in the AL range. I have gained a lot of insight with the comments you have posted on this site, Peter, and I have many questions regarding speciation, and reference material to help further my ID capabilities if you wouldn't mind receiving questions (let me know if posting in the forum is preferred).

I have been using mainly the reference below in my my quest to speciation:

Ground Beetles and Wrinkled Bark Beetles of South Carolina
By Janet Ciegler
Clemson University, 2000
ISBN: 0615114261
Cite: 3878

Since I'm not in South Carolina, there are discrepancies that have arisen, so to check the ranges of the keyed specimen I refer to:


ZooKeys 245 (2012) : Special issue: 1-1722

Catalogue of Geadephaga (Coleoptera: Adephaga) of America, north of Mexico

Yves Bousquet


Though an isolated list of our species might really help simplify my searches!

Sorry for the long, drawn out response. Thanks again for the warm welcome, and I look forward to contributing more data to the carabids of Alabama!

-Sean P.
… Sean Perez, 20 September, 2015 - 10:48am login or register to post comments

 
AL + SC caraboids
Sean, I'll e-mail you separate checklists for AL and SC to help you in deciding the usefulness of Ciegler's keys for the various genera in AL. Considering the set of combined names in both AL + SC, I'm guessing there is only about 80% intersection. That means for some difficult genera, you can't be sure of species using just Ciegler's keys.
… Peter W. Messer, 20 September, 2015 - 2:53pm login or register to post comments

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