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Photo#675845
green lacewing - Ceraeochrysa smithi

green lacewing - Ceraeochrysa smithi
Richmond, Fort Bend County, Texas, USA
July 17, 2012
Green lacewing, but I'm guessing it's hard to tell beyond that.

Moved
Moved from Ceraeochrysa.

Running through the keys (and now with some more familiarity with the genus as well as access to the full-sized image), I now have to disagree with Dr. Tauber. This comes after a few years' worth of internal debating. Ignoring the scapes for a moment, the presence of reddish triangular marks on the vertex is supposed to be uniquely diagnostic of C. smithi. Additionally, our other species that have a red-marked pronotum have light bases to the flagellum, not dark. And the only other described species in the genus within our area having a black base to the flagellum is the very different C. lineaticornis.

What I'm seeing in the photo as a whole is that the reddish color (not just of the scapes but also on the pronotum) seem to be muted in the photo. There are a number of reasons this can happen. If I run through editing software and pull down the blues (as I presume the background is supposed to be white) and pull up the reds instead, it looks like textbook C. smithi with red across the entire dorsal surface of the scapes. The extra blue ends up muting the reds toward more of a magenta.

This also becomes the earliest record for Texas at least on BugGuide.

Moved
Moved from Chrysopinae.

Another Ceraeochrysa?
Such long antennae should rule this down to Ceraeochrysa or Leucochrysa. I'm not seeing dark pterostigmas typical of various species of Leucochrysa, and red-marked pedicels do tend to be typical of Ceraeochrysa.

 
Other than C. smithi, are the
Other than C. smithi, are there any Ceraeochrysa species anywhere near his area that have all-dark scapes?

 
Some possibilities
I'm not seeing notes in the literature, but that could be for a few reasons. It could be that there's some variation within the species not previously noted, or it could be that there's an undescribed species. It could also be nothing more than a relic of photography, where the specimen in hand would be readily identifiable as C. smithi. I'd honestly suspect it may be a relic of photography, but I also don't have as much experience as Dr. Tauber to rule out the possibility of other options. It might could be passed on to Dr. Oswald if he's responsive to e-mails to see what his take is.

Moved
Moved from Green Lacewings.

I thought it was Ceraeochrysa smithi, but I asked Dr. Tauber, and she said the scapes aren't red enough.

Moved for expert attention; there is a faint hope
Moved from ID Request.

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