Cibdelis blaschkei

species ID

are you basing the ID on the online specimens at SBMNH? If it were me, I would never rely solely on SBMNH specimens to determine which species occur in the Bay Area, simply because SBMNH doesn't have a wide enough coverage of northern California specimens (just as Berkeley doesn't have as thorough a coverage of southern CA species as they have of Bay Area species). I use the SBMNH beetle database a lot -- it's an extremely useful site -- but SBMNH does not have northern CA specimens of all beetles that occur in northern CA.

An example is this Hadraule blaisdelli beetle I photographed in Alameda county. SBMNH has 25 specimens of this species, all from Santa Barbara county. This does not mean the species doesn't occur outside Santa Barbara county.

Are you basing the species ID on something other than what specimens are at SBMNH?

… Joyce Gross, 23 December, 2007 - 1:25pm

Wellllllll

Yes, I did base my species ID on records from SBMNH. The distribution of the other species was so far south near LA that I thought it would be justifiable to name this to species. It's also been found in Contra Costa County. I'm confident enough to keep my specimen labeled Cibdelis blaschkei. But if you want to move all the photos back to genus level go ahead.

… Will Chatfield-Taylor, 23 December, 2007 - 6:53pm

in January

I'll check the UCB specimens, which lists three Cibdelis species. I'll see where they are from. That should give a better idea to what occurs in the Bay Area and what doesn't. I'll leave the photos where they are for now.

Later edit: I see you've moved the photos back to genus. That's fine -- I'll still check the UCB specimens in January and see if that gives us more information (short of having a key to the genus...).

… Joyce Gross, 23 December, 2007 - 7:01pm

haha

I just moved the others back! Let's leave them there until you look at the specimens. Thanks for going through all the trouble, it's such a neat genus that I really wanted a species name

… Will Chatfield-Taylor, 23 December, 2007 - 7:03pm

if California weren't such a big state

we wouldn't have this problem. What we need is to combine the SBMNH specimens with the UCB specimens ... and UC Davis specimens ... that would give super coverage of the whole state.

Too bad there's not more money to pay people to do all this databasing!

… Joyce Gross, 23 December, 2007 - 7:10pm

definitely Cibdelis blaschkei

You're correct with this id Will. I checked the UCB specimens today. There were tons of Cibdelis blaschkei from the Bay Area, and only a few other specimens of two other CA Cibdelis species -- none from anywhere near here.

… Joyce Gross, 17 January, 2008 - 1:07am