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Photo#1524163
Acmaeodera - Acmaeodera mixta

Acmaeodera - Acmaeodera mixta
Las Cruces, Doña Ana County, New Mexico, USA
May 23, 2018

Moved

Locality
Can you give us a more precise location for where you took this photograph? If it was in or near to the city, anyplace in the desert environment, in my opinion this individual cannot represent said species. Is it possible you were in the nearby Organ Mountains?

 
Hi Dr. Westcott
I hope all is well! This was probably about 10-15 km from the Organ Mountains in a largely undeveloped desert environment on the outskirts of Cruces behind the place I lived at the time.

I also uploaded this to iNaturalist and you can see some a more exact depiction of the location at this link:

https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/12760733

 
Identity
Ah, that is good. I am going to move this to Acmaeodera mixta, as the shape fits, so too the locality. Both are wrong for A. variegata. The former species is all over the map with regards phenotype; I like to think that is why Horn give it the name, though probably that was not the case. But certain the species is a MIXed bag!

Moved
Moved from Acmaeodera.

Thanks guys. I'll move it over to variegata for now. Glad to see you over here, Joel! Hope that's the first of many comments!

A. variegata
I'm going to go out on a limb and for the first time comment on BugGuide, with an 'I agree' to Bruce's newest speculation. A. variegata is one of the only in this to be in this S. NM region by pattern design alone, but note also the setae which would not be as prominent on A. bowditchi (my only other guess).

Acmaeodera diffusa Barr 1969
*

 
Thanks
Is it usually found this far south? Looks like most of the BG records are from a good bit north of me. Surprising to find these here or just not something that's showed up on BG yet?

 
actually...
I am leaning toward Acm. variegata now...

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