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Photo#347559
Larvae(?) with 2 green glow spots found at night in Oregon - Pterotus obscuripennis

Larvae(?) with 2 green glow spots found at night in Oregon - Pterotus obscuripennis
Lebanon, Linn County, Oregon, USA
October 29, 2009
Size: one inch when stretched o
HELP! No one seems to know what this is...found at night and is, I believe,a larvae. It has spots that it can make glow this amazing LED like green light from the 2 small spots located near its rear. It is able to turn on the glow, or off in a dimmer-like way, but not in a repetitive fashion. They stay on for a long time or not depending on I don't know. The body is dark brown and has a scale-like look, it has 6 legs, and then the two lighter brown spots that can glow. So far I haven't been able to get a photo with the lights on

Thank you everyone!
When someone mentioned this website as a great source, I had no idea how wonderful! I've been told Oregon State University has closed its entomology department, and our local resources are limited unless you get the poor thing sent off to the state agriculture department. I do appreciate everyone's help and comments. It's humbling to know there's things out there that you don't know about even though you've lived in the area 40 years!

 
'humbling'
it is indeed! but, again, 99% of people who live all their lives at the same spot are unaware of 99.9% of animal species that live on their property and within a half-mile range -- and this is a conservative estimate. From experience, even if you have frantically collected/observed insects in the same developed suburban area every day for ten years in a row, you would still be finding something new every week, if not daily. And once you start paying attention to spiders, mites, millipedes, mollusks, worms... -- you realize that you've hardly dented the fauna of the patch of land where you think you know every blade of grass already.

Hi Barb...excellent picture..
Hi Barb...excellent picture...this is the larva of Pterotus obscuripennis Leconte....adult females are larviform and concolorous white. Males have unipectinate antennae and do not have any luminescent capacity. Your quoted size, 1 inch, isn't big enough to be certain of its future sex...the females are much much bigger than the males, so if yours grows any bigger it would have to be a female. 1 inch is about the breaking point for a subjective call on what sex it will become. Hope you are trying to rear it...Try to get Michael Dean's Master's thesis at Humboldt State U, it explains all the details on how to rear the things...if you need help, contact me personally, this is one of the most enigmatic lampyrids in the fauna along with certain others in your area of the country.

 
We see them in the fall after the rains
photo here:
http://bugguide.net/node/view/359388

Moved
Moved from ID Request.

Pterotus obscuripennis.
Had I not grown up in Portland I probably wouldn't know this one, either. They are not commonly found, though they are not rare, either. Yes, could be a larviform female as suggested, but might also be a larva. Moving to species page so you can see what the adult males look like.

Firefly
In case "Lampyridae" is an unfamiliar term, this is a firefly. Wingless nymphs and wingless or non-flying adult females are much harder to find than those flashing, flying adult males!

best guess, Lampyridae -- maybe an adult female
looks interesting, will ask around.
Please try to take & upload more pix of them!

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