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For Insects, Spiders & Their Kin
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Photo#68321
Mantidfly - Entanoneura batesella

Mantidfly - Entanoneura batesella
Lady Lake, Lake County, Florida, USA
August 1, 2006
Size: 26mm-body
Came to light. Possibly the same species as?

Images of this individual: tag all
Mantidfly - Entanoneura batesella Mantidfly - Entanoneura batesella

Moved
Moved from Entanoneura.

Moved
Moved from Dicromantispa.

I'll let those with more expertise determine whether or not a species page is warranted.

Entanoneura
This is Entanoneura (most likely batesella).
It seems that there is an isolated area of batesella's range in Florida, which has been overlooked and undocumented so far.

 
Entrnoneura
Fantastic! I knew that it wasn't something that had been documented before. I suppose it is most likely to be an introduction from the Neotropics?

Moved
Moved from Mantidflies per Dr. Oswald until/unless an alternative is determined.

Moved
Moved from Dicromantispa.

Moved
Moved from Dicromantispa sayi.

Different species
This has got to be a different species than what has been documented in the U.S. It has several unique features:
The color (brown and yellow), number of forks in wing venation (a dozen or more wishbones), and length/shape of neck (shorter, stouter, and curved) make these really distinct.
Compare side-by-side with the typical Dicromantispa sayi

I've only seen two others like this:
here and here

If someone can collect one of these unusual Florida specimens and send it to me, I can sequence the DNA to assist with identification.

 
I'm assuming that it's safe in Dicromantispa...
...based on Dr. Oswald's ID below. But if that's not the case let me know and I'll move it to Mantispidae.

 
I'm not certain...
...but I'm pretty sure it's Mantispinae and certain it's Mantispidae.

 
My "two cents"
I'm a bit rusty on all the taxonomic subtleties of Dicromantispa and its relation to similar-looking taxa, but I'd hazard to say this would probably be best placed as robust individual of D. sayi (perhaps a gravid female) based on "current" circumscriptions (i.e. presuming things haven't changed since I studied the situation in 2013).

Note that D. sayi is a variable species, with at least two color forms...for details see "Identification" and "Remarks" headings on this BugGuide info page. So it's not clear what the notion a "typical D. sayi", in the vernacular sense, would be. But the brown & yellow color and large number of "wishbones" here seem quite compatible with the southern form of D. sayi...as does the (vaguely) 3-banded antennae (better seen in 2nd photo).

And, just to be clear, the "wishbones" characters is something I proposed in the remarks & comments here...and while the idea may be useful, I don't know whether formal mantispid taxonomists would fully embrace them. ;-) Wishbones can be difficult to count without a clear transverse view of a single fore-wing edge (overlap can often make it hard to clearly discern relevant "wishbones" from the morass of other veins when two wings are held closely together). Also, wishbones get smaller and smaller towards the wing apex, and it can get difficult to decide what constitutes a "bonafide wishbone" (i.e. because the forked portion can become quite small). Sometimes the distal-most wishbones (near the wing-tip) are separated by a(n unforked) linear vein reaching the margin, so I (somewhat arbitrarily) adopted a convention of including only consecutive wishbones in my counts.

But in this post the 2nd photo gives a good view, and like Russell, I too count at least 12. There's some ambiguity here as to how many more than 12 there are here, since the "13th wishbone" (I count starting from wing base to tip) is very small, and arguably nested in a larger "14th wishbone".

Finally, I don't know whether the neck shape & length here is diagnostic of something different...they look within range of variation to my eye. (Good old variation...the bane of dreams for a "tidy" taxonomy! ;-)

Moved
Moved from Dicromantispa.

For what it's worth...
We only have two species of Dicromantispa in our area...D. sayi and D. interrupta. Both occur in Florida. My best guess here would be D. sayi, though your earlier post with the eggs gets closer to the borderline between the two as far as I can tell.

You may be interested in the comments appearing in the post below concerning how to distinguish the two species...and the special (somewhat intermediate) form of D. interrupta that occurs in peninsular Florida:


Moved
Moved from Mantidflies.

#68321 Identification – Dicromantispa sp.
Identification.