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Photo#1740150
Aradus ovatus - female

Aradus ovatus - Female
Wilbarger County, Texas, USA
March 19, 1969
Size: 5.7 mm
TAMUIC specimen; ID is mine
fantastic bug, apparently the only known specimen besides the holotype (which is also a female), and a state record

Thank you
... for your 'fantastic' comment. It raised my curiosity, so I did a little 'trip' on the web.
Aradus ovatus was described by Nicholas A. Kormilev in 1966 (Description here (1) on page 3-4, and draw of head and pronotum - fig.2 and of the tip of the abdomen - fig 3, on page 24 )
Comparing the picture above with the draws (from Kormilev article) I noticed some differences.
1) The shape oh the head (dorsal view):
- In the picture above the post-ocular line of the head seem to go under an angle, relative to the ante-ocular line of the head, (in other words, the head go directly narrow after the eyes),
- In the draw the post-ocular line of the head goes straight, continuing the ante-ocular line of the head and then it bends rounded, at an almost right angle.
(Is it and the possibility, that the draws do not perfectly match the real, too? or some shadows in the picture?)
2) The anterior margin and the lateral margins of the pronotum seem to be somewhat different, but I am not sure if I interpret well these lines or how much is so due to the angle of the picture.
Still, I am just an amateur with little experience.
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My curiosity was and about the year when the holotype was collected (due to the fact that the species was described in 1966 while the TAMUIC specimen was collected in 1969).
Kormilev says only that it was collected by Crevecoeur in Onaga, Kansas, but nothing about the date when it was collected.
Fortunately, I found the date on the page of Smithsonian National Museum of History The holotype was collected on April 6, 1928. So much earlier than the species was described and than the TAMUIC specimen was collected.
I wonder if the two dates, April (in Kansas) for the holotype and March (in Texas) for the TAMUIC specimen, could suggest that a chance to find again this species (as an adult) could be higher in the spring?
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The collector must be Ferdinand F.Crevecoeur (1862-1931) " an amateur entomologist and naturalist who has been the source of many insect records from Onaga, Kansas"

I wonder if he is a descendant of J. Hector St. John de Crèvecœur (1735-1813) a French-American writer, "...the first writer to describe to Europeans – employing many American English terms – the life on the American frontier and to explore the concept of the American Dream ..." (quote from Wikipedia). I don't know, but this would be another story. (sorry for the digression)

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