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Photo#737212
Pyrochroidae, dorsal - Pedilus lugubris - male

Pyrochroidae, dorsal - Pedilus lugubris - Male
100 Acre Wood, Winneshiek County, Iowa, USA
June 4, 2011
Size: 7 mm

Images of this individual: tag all
Pyrochroidae, dorsal - Pedilus lugubris - male Pyrochroidae, pronotum - Pedilus lugubris - male Pyrochroidae, lateral - Pedilus lugubris - male

Moved
Moved from Pedilus.

Pedilus lugubris (Say)
It's a rather unusual color combination, but it is most definitely a male of Pedilus lugubris (Say). This species shows a great deal of color variation (as do quite a number of Pedilus - and that has led to a lot of taxonomic confusion, not to mention a proliferation of synonyms).

male Pedilus [elegans??]
no cantharid has an abruptly defined neck or a cushion-like prothorax like here
Moved from Soldier Beetles.

 
OK, so
maybe I'm a slow learner. No wonder I couldn't find anything that looked like it! Thanks much.

 
come on! you're the best, MJ
for centuries, this genus's affiliations have been puzzling workers who made it bounce between any number of foster families, including, if memory serves me, Anthicidae, Meloidae, Pedilidae... and what not, although its position within the tenebriod stock [=former Heteromera, give or take] was not questioned -- the 5-5-4 tarsal formula works fine in most cases, although a number of small tenebrionoids have reduced tarsomere numbers, while a few non-tenebrionoid oddballs also use the 5-5-4 arrangement, but the cantharids are not among them: those are invariably 5-5-5:

 
I hate to tell you
but I haven't counted tarsomeres since I started using BG. Nor have I keyed anything either. And I'm not so sure I could anymore. Shall I blame you all that I've gotten slack? I think I shall.

 
will gladly take the blame.
happy to have played a part in delivering a fellow human being from the horrors of keying out stuff

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