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Photo#909141
Beetle - Amara cupreolata - male

Beetle - Amara cupreolata - Male
Pheasant Branch Conservancy, Middleton, Dane County, Wisconsin, USA
April 7, 2014
Size: ~7.5mm
Amara(1)?

Images of this individual: tag all
Beetle - Amara cupreolata - male Beetle - Amara cupreolata - male Beetle - Amara cupreolata - male

Moved
Moved from Seed-Eating Ground Beetles. Thanks Peter.

Amara cupreolata (male)
based on my microscopic examination of this specimen which is deposited in the P.W.Messer collection as a photo-voucher. Thanks Tom.

Supplementing the revision of the cupreolata group by Hieke (2003), a minimal combination of external clues provided by Bousquet (2010) and my personal observation that refute siblings A. neoscotica & A. tenax but that support A. cupreolata for this specimen are as follows:

1) Posteriolateral setigerous puncture not touching basal bead of pronotum vs touching in A. neoscotica (after Bousquet);

2) Pronotal microsculpture distinct vs obscure in A. tenax (pers. obs.)

At a later date I will need to dissect aedeagus for study and confirmation of species.

My tentative image-based gestaltic fit = Amara aenea
Tom, despite your good close-up attempt to show the taxonomically-important number of tiny setigerous punctures on right elytron subapically, the image resolution on my end failed to show with confidence the expected three punctures needed for A. aenea. I see for sure only one such structure. These tiny pits and their associated short hairs (often broken off) can be tricky to capture even when examining under scope. Otherwise, there are a few anatomic characters I see that support A. aenea but will not belabor them here unless I'm prodded. Especially regarding genus Amara, I have a justifiably low level of confidence when it comes to accurate species identification given the usual magnification & resolution of BugGuide photographs.

ADDENDUM 4/22/2014: See update to A. cupreolata above!

Moved
Moved from Ground Beetles.

Amara, yes

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