Nysius vinitor

Making a deposit.

comments (13)

Pudding4brains

Lion

Howdy - this is certainly not a Mirid, but a Lygaeoidea. [[Edit: Scratch this: Regardless of taxonomic preferences this should still be family Lygaeidae, subfamily Orsillinae]]. I'd say it should be some Nysius, but you'd better check with a decent Aussie checklist what other options there may be...

P.S. Ahw, duh - correct that - someone has seen opportunity to even shift the Orsilinae into a family of their own *rolleyes* :
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/294591927_Review_and_Revision_of_Nysius_Dallas_of_Australia_and_South_West_Pacific_Hemiptera_Heteroptera_Orsillidae Posted 4 years ago, modified 4 years ago
1. Christine Young
  
  Lion
  
  Arp, what do you think about it being the same one as here (and maybe Nysius vinitor?):
  
  Posted 4 years ago
2. 1. Pudding4brains
    
    Lion
    
    Ah, yes, I missed that one - certainly also Orsilli(n|d)ae, Nysiini. Meantime, I had a quick look at the other genera listed on Atlas of living Australia and would think this has to be Nysius indeed. Browsing quickly through the revision/key to Nysius that I linked above, I found a few things hampering a "total match" for both N. vinitor and N. caledoniae, with the key and the description sections not quite taking each other seriously between themselves, or so it seemed on a quick first glance ... :-/ (may have to revisit that).
    
    The specimen on both photos here do seem to be a close fit to a few of the photos in the vinitor gallery on AolA, not withstanding the same issues I had with the description, so that might be a point in favour of N. vinitor, but how reliable are the IDs there? (I seem to remember from previous discussions that these also sometimes come from the likes of iNaturalist and hence may well be very questionable?!)
    
    Also, the fact that there are no images for N. caledoniae there, doesn't really help for comparison, or a sense of reliability for that matter. Will try to revisit the descriptions later tonight, taking the other image into consideration too...
    
    Considering the key, it would help if the images were sharp enough to show some of the hairs. It seems to be easy enough to find, so maybe Niel can try again? Posted 4 years ago, modified 4 years ago
  2. 1. Christine Young
      
      Lion
      
      Thanks for sharing your thoughts Arp. It's hard to know which sources online to "trust" as accurate. I really struggle with that. And, it's compounded by science as it changes, species are merged/separated, etc. I previously assumed iNat was super accurate; and maybe it is, but after recently reading about how some people on that site may guess at IDs in order to gain points, I am more weary now. I suspect that when points/bragging status are rewarded in exchange for IDs, there may be some incorrectly identified organisms. Human nature :P. Posted 4 years ago
    2. 1. Pudding4brains
        
        Lion
        
        I've just tried to kick off a discussion, that may hopefully shed some light on usability of some characters and trustworthiness of IDs on iNat:
        https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/9326005 Posted 4 years ago
      2. Pudding4brains
        
        Lion
        
        Okay, so that effort (on iNat) got out of hand a bit *rolleyes* without really clearing things up on valid/useful characters for ID.
        I'm pretty darn sure by now that the current leading image for N. vinitor on iNat is in fact N. caledoniae and I have added it as such to my own references for comparison.
        All in all I'm strongly leaning toward (the true) N. vinitor now for the images that Niel has posted here, and in fact I see he has already made that decision for himself, so all's well that ends well ... I'll leave it at that and carry on ;o) Posted 4 years ago
      3. Christine Young
        
        Lion
        
        Phew. I just read the iNat thread. I have trouble following conversations online because I am unable to "read between the lines". But, I find it frustrating when people are unwilling to admit that an "expert" can make a mistake. And, furthermore, being an entomologist doesn't make a person an expert on all insects. I am an entomologist, yet I only focused on medically important arthropods with minimal study of other insects. I can't stand pomp. But, maybe I'm misunderstanding what was meant by the reference to the 'entomology experts with ## years of experience' therefore being more knowledgeable than you. Grr. Anyway, best to move on.
        
        Reading that iNat discussion reinforced my notion that the website can't be trusted for accurate IDs, which is a real shame. I don't know how they can fix it since they allow anyone to suggest/add/degrade an ID and their platform is too enormous for oversight. But, not my problem. Posted 4 years ago
        
        Pudding4brains
        
        Lion
        
        Hi Christine, thanks for your remarks :o) I'm not at all upset with this Brett guy preferring to trod carefully when countering the opinion of experts of one of their national museums, but yes - like I noted there also - being an entomologist/curator says nothing about expertise on any particular group. One person can only know so much of course. That said, I know _nothing_ about the Aussie fauna, so no problem for me to not meddle with their IDs and just ask questions to try and see what others think. Maybe one of the experts will yet chip in... we'll see.
        
        Trustworthy identification is very problematic on the internet. I only know/use a few dozen sites or so where I more or less "blindly" trust what they've put up (and there will always be the occasional error even in these).
        
        All other IDs on the net are always to be approached with caution. Same still goes for JD I'm afraid ... but there is just no way that the few of us that engage in finding IDs can manage to find an ID (or check a suggested one) for each and every "exotic" creature uploaded here. I think you and a handful of others do an incredible job as it is(!) but with this being a worldwide site and just a handful of enthusiasts to manage things there will always be room for reasonable doubt.
        
        That's not a bad thing per se - it's just exemplary for how things work elsewhere also and that it's best to doubt most IDs you run into on the net and maybe try to find out who was involved in the ID or how it came to be, before taking it at face value. Posted 4 years ago, modified 4 years ago
        
        Pudding4brains
        
        Lion
        
        P.S. Sorry, I might have phrased the part on JD better. The point being, that on sites such as JD but also the likes of Flickr, SmugMug etc. it is quite impossible to come to a site-wide trustworthiness of identifications (simply too much work for those who would be inclined to try reaching that goal), so what it boils down to is learning to recognize the "qualities" of the _people_ involved and applying your trust in the ID based on that.
        
        Flickr is a whole is generally hopeless when it comes to IDs, but there is also quite a few photographers there that I know will do their utmost to get a proper ID on their photos, much like yourself here(!), so then it becomes a different ball game.
        
        If I see one of the usually excellent(!) images of Gilles San Martin, Tristan Bantock, Jan van Duinen or some others on Flickr, I know I can trust the ID (for the usual 99,9% orso). Same goes for IDs where the ID was provided in the comments by some who know their stuff. But it takes work/time to be able to filter that out for yourself in the long run.
        
        On general purpose sites there is no way around getting a feel for the _people_ involved in each individual ID. As such, you might argue for example that the IDs of this "Pudding4brains" on JD can probably be trusted for Woodlice or Harvestmen, but may be quite iffy on Lepidopterans. There is no way around "getting to know" the community like that in the long run.
        
        The exception of course are "special purpose" sites where all the content is curated by a few specialists for that special purpose display. Think of collembola.org , britishbugs.org.uk , miridae.dk , kerbtier.de etc. to name but a few. For those sites the challenge is to bring together a _complete_ overview, or as a result the challenge for the visitor is to keep in mind that some species might still be missing. But at least the images that _are_ presented can usually be trusted to a very high degree (no one is 100% without error).
        
        P.P.S. One "shiny" example I should really add is waarneming.nl
        Of course, seen on a world scale this is just an unimportant niche (very small country), but it is the closest thing to a combination of general and special purpose that I know of. It's general purpose in the sense that iNat, proj. Noah etc are, in that anyone can "dump" their observations there, but is special purpose in the sense that any "validation" to species ID is done by specialists, with many, many über-experts on board. This has resulted in a database of observations (or photos for that matter) that is still without competition in terms of quantity and quality of identification. For example: In a niche group like Scorpionflies we now have around 15000 images of which around 13000 are "validated" to species. That is 13000 images that can be trusted (by and large) to carry the correct name. If you're looking to learn about variability that is without precedence. When I started doing Scorpionflies around maybe 13 years ago I was hard pressed to find a couple of hundred images on the net, most with the wrong name on'm.
        One word of warning: I'm at a constant struggle with the forces that be, because I feel strongly that as a _default_ only "validated" images should be shown and _not_ as a standard the most recent ones (that usually still need review), so it is up to the visitor to constantly check the box "only validated" to be sure that the results are accurate. I think that's a (very) bad thing, but we can't win'm all I suppose ... Posted 4 years ago, modified 4 years ago
        
        Christine Young
        
        Lion
        
        I agree with your assertions!
        
        waarneming.nl seems like a really useful site. I tend to trust BugGuide and Mushroom Observer, but have found recently that it can take quite awhile to get feedback on those sites. On iNat, I have learned to check a person's credentials before trusting an ID. Even then, as you said, no one is perfect. Everyone makes mistakes and there is no shame in that. There is no pissing contest when it comes to identifying creatures.
        
        Here's a good example of assuming someone is an expert: I have been tagged numerous times on iNat by people asking for help with mushroom IDs. I can identify very few mushrooms! But, they assume that I am good at identifying mushrooms because I have shared a bunch. Most were identified by experts though, not me. Posted 4 years ago
        
        Pudding4brains
        
        Lion
        
        Yes, getting an ID (or correction/confirmation) on sites that involve experts can take a long time - on waarneming from hours to months, years or never at all (no experts at all), but when you get it you know what you've got ;o)
        Being "accused" of expertise: Funny how these things work :o) One day, long ago, I was confused by a few woodlice due to Dutch and German vernacular names being false friends (similar name, different species), so I spent a few days getting my head around that and in the end was able to recognize all of the 4-5 most common species. Well, that instantly made me the woodlouse expert on the forum. In the end, I ran with that and learned enough about all the other species too (but it took a while ;o) Posted 4 years ago
        
        Christine Young
        
        Lion
        
        Nice! You definitely have a unique niche! Posted 4 years ago
3. Calbost Niel
  
  Lion
  
  Above my pay rate wise one Posted 4 years ago