Postpupal stage - Psyllobora vigintimaculata

Moved

… R. Berg, 9 October, 2009 - 3:30pm

Wonderful series!

One of the best eclosion (eclosure?) photo series I've seen, the stages of wing extension and development are especially good, and recording the time is helpful.

This seems to be an especially good year for Psyllobora, many BG contributors are submitting photos and commenting "It's been a while since I saw one of these" or "I haven't seen this many before." It's been a wet year in the East at least, which probably has promoted the plant mold.

… Abigail Parker, 9 October, 2009 - 7:41am

Thanks

This area has had a drought, but not our yard. We have a well.

All these photos were taken outdoors. Nevertheless, to avoid overloading Browse and Search and so forth with pictures of the same specimen, I left off dates after the first photo. Should the Representative box also be unchecked? (Noneditors don't have one.)

Is this a 20-spot? You gave criteria, but I don't know which named spots are which.

… R. Berg, 9 October, 2009 - 10:53am

Representative images

That just means that, when someone views the Info page for Psyllobora or any higher taxa, the image is included in the randomly-selected pictures at the top of the page. As long as the images are of good quality and the insect is clearly visible at thumbnail size, there's no reason they should not be representative. I only uncheck Representative for images that are low-quality or don't have a good view of the insect at thumbnail size.

Personally, I don't mind seeing a lot of images in Browse or Search; if I do an advanced search for Psyllobora in October and see a whole string of images from the same California county, it's easy to figure out that they are likely from a single contributor and are of a limited number of individuals. In fact, it's nice to know when there's a photo series!

This is another 20-spot. The "lateral apical spots" are at the tail end of the body, at the outer edge of the elytra (closest to the bottom when the insect is perched). Psyllobora generally have two of these spots on each side. In P. 20-maculata they are close together or even joined (like this one appears to be), in P. borealis they are more widely-spaced and always separate from each other.

Here's a labeled photo of P. borealis's pattern:

… Abigail Parker, 9 October, 2009 - 12:43pm