9048696 Mantidfly - Dicromantispa sayi

Moved

Moved from Mantidflies.

Hi Rob. This one is D. sayi...can't make out the setae on the pronotum (= long "neck" here), but note the 9 "wishbones" along the apical half of the upper side of the forewing.

… Aaron Schusteff, 19 February, 2018 - 5:58pm

Thanks. Trouble seeing that

Thanks. Trouble seeing that with the other wing confusing things. I see some Y's. How many species does Illinois have? I have all the BG ones now.

… Rob Curtis, 21 February, 2018 - 9:32am

Takes practice to discern and "follow" the wishbones

I usually begin to count from the tip of the wing (where the slightly longer forewing can usually be distinguished from the hindwing), and then carefully follow where the pairs of the "forks" for each wishbone hit the outer vein (=costa) of the forewing. I also look at the full-size image (if the contributor has posted larger than 560 x 560...which they should if they can, as it really helps BG editors & experts in making ID's). It's also helpful to use your web-browser to zoom-in (by repeatedly pressing cntl-+ on a MS Windows machine, or Cmd-+ on a Mac).

In that way, I can count at least 9 wishbones in your image...and as soon as you get to 8, you can pretty much eliminate L. pulchella as a candidate (unless you've happened upon a very anomolous individual...one should always try to check more than one character if possible).

We only have two Dicromantispa north of Mexico...and apparently both occur in Illinois. I'm not sure off-hand how many other mantispids occur in IL (Leptomantispa pulchella...and maybe Zeugomantispa minuta? Perhaps some Plega too?). What a marvelous family! :-)

PS: After writing the above, I navigated to family Mantispidae in the BugGuide tree, then clicked the "Data" tab and search under "Illinois" (retrieving this listing). Found I had overlooked the impressively plump Climaciella brunnea, which also occurs in IL.

I also checked the Catalog of Penny et al(1) (plus (2)) and it seems Plega (at least as listed there) are restricted to CA, NV, AZ, UT, and TX. So, from BugGuide & the catalog listings, Illinois has the following Mantispidae:

D. interrupta, D. sayi, L. pulchella, Z. minuta, and C. brunnea.

Thus you have both Dicromantispa species...but three more IL mantispids to look forward to :-)

… Aaron Schusteff, 21 February, 2018 - 8:16pm

I thought I had 4 new species

I thought I had 4 new species in Illinois this year, but then I see that I have D. sayi from AZ, where I also have a Plega on BG. I am missing L. pulchella. The other 2 were easy to ID.

… Rob Curtis, 22 February, 2018 - 2:53am

The hardest ones to separate

...are D. sayi and L. pulchella. Struggling with that irksome problem was what prompted me to formulate the "wishbones character" (cf. the "Hi Patrick" comment below this post).

Climaciella brunnea and Zeugomantispa minuta are fairly easy to recognize (the latter being our only green mantispid).

… Aaron Schusteff, 22 February, 2018 - 3:52pm