Wingless Coreid Bug (Agriocopocoris sp.)
These two wingless squash bugs looking very much like nymphs of other coreid bugs, were spotted mating on this acacia wattle. The larger of the two,the female would have been about 12 mm long. The bugs had narrow, small heads and the antennae were 4- segmented. The bodies were a grey-brown colour.
Spotted on black wattle (Acacia mearnsii) in a national park
No species identified
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By Leuba Ridgway
All rights reserved
Uploaded Oct 16, 2017. Captured Oct 16, 2017 11:21 in Army Track, Lysterfield South VIC 3156, Australia.
comments (9)
There are four species of the wingless coried bug.
Peter Chen uses CSIRO reference. CSIRO is probably correct but Chen may not be.
I am not familiar with his source material and do not know the difference between the four genera.
https://bie.ala.org.au/species/urn:lsid:biodiversity.org.au:afd.taxon:a145a143-4c10-490b-9cc1-7184ac355e35#classification
Do you have more sources to ID this to species level?
Posted 7 years ago
Brailovsky, Harry; Cassis, Gerasimos (1999) Revision of the tribe Agriopocorini (Hemiptera: Coreidae: Coreinae). - Canadian Entomologist, vol.131, pp.293-321..
That not being available, the CSIRO catalogue might help a little:
Cassis, Gerasimos; Gross, Gordon F. (2002) Hemiptera. In Houston & Wells (eds.) Zoological catalogue of Australia, vol.27, 737pp. CSIRO Publishing
Agriopocorini, p.99 : https://books.google.com/books?id=UWifn5wT6D8C&pg=PA99
Here we find that we can probably scratch a fair number of species based on distribution and it also gives us some hints for other publications that CAN be found online:
Miller, NCE (1954) A new subfamily and new genera and species of Australian Hemiptera-Heteroptera, - Procedings Linnean Society New South Wales, vol.78, pp.233-240
https://biodiversitylibrary.org/page/34949220
Stys, P. (1964) On the morphology and taxonomy of Agriopocorinae (Heteroptera, Coreidae) - Acta Societatis Entomologicae Cechosloveniae, vol.61, pp.25-38
https://kramerius.lib.cas.cz/search/i.jsp?pid=uuid:b0e7007e-bac8-11e1-4047-001143e3f55c
The catalogue would have the Stys to be from 1967, but to me it looks like 1964 (and the Coreoidea species file seems to agree):
http://coreoidea.speciesfile.org/Common/basic/Taxa.aspx?TaxonNameID=1190650
The catalogue and the species file tell us that the most recent insights from the article by Brailovsky & Cassis (1999) - unavailable to us - must be that :
- A. dimorphus Štys, 1964 is just a winged form of froggatti
- A. macilentus Miller, 1954 has been synonymized with porcellus
So, using the catalogue we should only consider A. chadwicki, froggatti and porcellus from the publications by Miller and Stys. The Stys basically only gives an ample description of A. dimorphus, but as such re-describes frogatti in many respects.
I think we can safely rule out porcellus, leaving us with only froggatti and chadwicki to choose from.
Leuba's image mostly only shows us useful details of the female. Going by Miller's figs 1G and 2G, I would think the shape of the last abdominal tergites would be a good fit for froggatti. Unfortunately Stys does not pay much attention to this and his drawings of the female dimorphus (hence froggatti) could almost just as well be the chadwicki female drawn by Miller *sigh*.
Using other structural differences/characters mentioned in the publications, I would probably over all prefer froggatti, but if Leuba happens to have a good shot of the male's abdominal apex, that could really clear things up more definitely.
Cheers, Arp Posted 7 years ago, modified 7 years ago
I do not have other sources and used just Peter Chew as a resource. I checked yours and Nick M's pics - and neither has identified the species. I should perhaps stop at the genus at this stage. Posted 7 years ago
My thanks to Martin & Arp. Posted 7 years ago
What is the "Peter Chew" you are both referring to? Is it a publication? website (Brisbane Insects)? person who helped?
According to Miller the shape of the last abdominal tergites on the female could possibly be diagnostic, it is just that the drawing by Stys didn't follow suit much, but I'm suspecting that to be imprecise, maybe. Also, the structure of the surface on head and pronotum is supposed to be diagnostic. These things - as far as I could discern from the photo - gave me reason to prefer froggatti here, but I'm certainly no specialist and I'm sure a specialist might be able to tell more just by jizz or some such.
It would be a shame, me thinks, to leave such interesting creatures "unidentified" (sensu JD), so maybe we can ask the likes of Harry Brailovsky, Gerasimos Cassis, Gordon Gross. I don't know any of the Aussie specialist personally (not even if they are all still around), but it's worth a try.
Do you or Martin have contacts in that direction or shall I just try to find email addresses and go ahead and ask?
Also, do you (Leuba) maybe have better/bigger close-ups of the female's last abdominal segments and or the surface structure of head/pronotum?
Cheers, Arp Posted 7 years ago, modified 7 years ago
Cheers, Arp Posted 7 years ago
From that, it becomes clearer that it should really be froggatti shown here. Distribution wise it is - according to the 1999 article - the only choice ("Victoria has one genus and one species"). Now, by itself I would consider that "thin ice" for a positive ID, especially almost 20 years later, but many of the differences that the publication lists between froggatti and chadwicki can be more or less recognized on the image and those that can be all fall in favour of froggatti (habitus, expression of the carinae on ab.segs. 4/5, tubercles etc. etc.).
So, all things considered, I would suggest that it's quite safe to stick with Leuba's original ID of froggatti :o)
Cheers, Arp Posted 7 years ago
I have read the article and and checked out the diagrams you sent me. This might amuse you but I am going with A.chadwicki as a more likely option. This is for the following reasons:
strongly elevated carinae on abdominal segments 4 & 5, decumbent whitish bristle-like setae on most of the body ( frogatti, I believe have longer bristles on some of the abd. segments). the small lobular structure posterior to the eye seen only in chadwicki (from the diagrams in the article) and the narrower body shape. Also, the second antennal segment appears smaller than the other segments in my insect, in keeping with that of chadwicki - but this might need an expert eye.
Now, as we both have differing opinions as to what the species is, I will see if I can get another independent expert opinion. Until then I will leave without a species. Your articles have been a great help. Thanks so much again. Posted 7 years ago