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Photo#426545
What a difference 3 years can make... - Plega - female

What a difference 3 years can make... - Plega - Female
Webb Canyon, ~2000 ft. elevation, Los Angeles County, California, USA
June 30, 2007
I was going through some really old photos in the hopes of finding a hidden treasure when I came across this... My heart soared and then sank as I realized that three years ago I had unwittingly seen my first mantidfly and (not realizing what it was) only took these two crappy shots of the insect from inside my kitchen as it clung to the outside of the window frame. My thoughts are currently so consumed by arthropods that it's hard for me to recall that a short time ago most things other than butterflies were barely even on my radar.

Well, anyway, my best guess is that this might belong in Genus Plega. Is there anyone out there brave enough to confirm my guess or offer another suggestion based solely on these horrible images? If so -- thanks!!

Images of this individual: tag all
What a difference 3 years can make... - Plega - female What a difference 3 years can make... - Plega - female

Moved
Moved from Mantidflies.

Greetings Harsi...hope this ripple makes it to you wherever you are out there in the universe, and that it finds you well :-)

This is definitely Plega. As you noted, it's clearly a mantispid, and the other genera of the family which occur in the US are either in the subfamily Mantispinae...which have noticeably longer "giraffe-like necks" (pronota)...or are in the subfamily Calomantispinae, genus Nolima...which, within the US, is only recorded from AZ and TX. Nolima also has a different wing venation than the very Plega-like venation here (cf. Figs. 12 and 13 on pg. 706 of Reynoso-Velasco & Contreras-Ramos(1)). Hope we get some images of Nolima on BugGuide at some point. (And also of the manstispine genus Xeromantispa from the southwest...neither has any photos that I can find on the web.)

And this is indeed a female...the "tail" curling upwards from the tip of the abdomen is her ovipositor.

One might even speculate that it's species signata from the location, but that's not certain.

Moved

Correct.
Your ID is correct, Harsi. Nice to see you here again :-)

 
Thanks, Eric!
Were you confirming the ID to family or my guess as to which genus?

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