I'm curious about this tiny creature...in particular, what is it? I noticed it while standing near to the open sliding door of my van during breakfast while camping in an open pinyon woodland. Unfortunately I can't clearly recall the details of exactly where I first saw it...i.e. outside the van or inside? So I can't provide clear info on the microhabitat or substrate where it occurred (other than it wasn't aquatic ;-). It may even have been transported from a different natal locale.
At any rate, I
think it's a beetle larva...after consulting "How to Know the Immature Insects
(1)" and trying my best to glean (perhaps not quite enough?) detail from my photos to navigate the key to orders there (starting on
pg. 28). However, even after studying the key, discussion, and many line drawings for larvae of the various beetle families therein (on
pp. 72-128)...I couldn't find a good family match for the characters here.
Among what strike me as somewhat distinctive characters are:
1) it's a hexapod, and there appear to be typical insect tagma: head, thorax with 3 segments (each with a pair of legs), and 9 abdominal segments (as best I can discern from the 4th photo). The head has 2 conspicuous antennae with slender bristles; what appear to be dark (labial?) palps pointing forward; what appear to be 2 tiny eyes (or clusters of ocelli?, beetle larvae lack compound eyes)...though perhaps they're specks of dirt?;
2) the somewhat compact overall shape: wider & shorter than what seems the more typical longer & narrower body aspect in many beetle larvae...and the relatively dorso-ventrally flattened cross-sectional shape (i.e. convex above, planar ventrally), as opposed to more cylindrical in most beetle groups;
3) Most intriguing to me are the two, smooth, "sausage-shaped" (maxillary?) palps (not visible in the 1st photo but apparent in the 2nd-5th photos, especially in the unfortunately somewhat blurry 3rd photo).
The mottled brown-and-white pattern seemed suggestive of Coccinellidae to me, but the figures in
(2) (e.g.
Fig. 1,
Fig. 2, and many others) indicate larvae in that family lack conspicuous antennae. Also, the thoracic nota in the larva here have transverse grooves (2 on the pronotum, 1 each on the meso- and metanotum)...which doesn't seem to be the case in the many coccinellid larvae figured in
(2).
PostScript (10/10/20): In hindsight (after T. Hedlund's ID move to Coniopterygidae below), if I had been able to: 1) be clear on the "non-chewing" and "mandibulo-suctorial type" of the mouthparts (which are hidden under the dark forward-projecting labrum, which itself is poorly-resolved in the photos); and 2) that the tarsi have "two claws" (which I think I can barely discern zoomed-in on the full-size version of my 5th photo), I could have gotten to order Neuroptera in the larval key in Chu(1949) via couplet choices: 1b → 4b → 17a → 18b → 34a → 35a → 41b → 44b. And from Chu's Neuroptera key, to family Coniopterygidae via: 1b → 4b → 6b → 7b → 8a.
