Mediterranean shield bug

- No description given -

comments (2)

Pudding4brains

Lion

Hi WildFlower, good thing you asked! I had seen the image appear on the site and never gave it a second thought ... meaning that at a first glance it really looked okay ... but it isn't. The colours and heavy contrast are much more typical for C. mediterraneus (and by the blunt humeral angles it would be C. m. ssp. mediterraneus, which fits perfectly with the eastern "range"), but the black mark on the shoulders running along the front of the pronotum is a dead give away against C.med. On C.med and fuscispinus the black mark runs along the posterior lateral margin, on C.purpureipennis and pudicus along the anterior margin. Of course there are other morphological differences but this is a strong and easily recognizable feature.
So it is one of the p&p duo. These two are quite variable in the shape of the traditional "characters" used for recognizing them, with even some overlapp (or close), so that they are often refered to as "genital identification" species. To me, this one looks, much much more like purpureipennis and I would assume it to be outside of a presumed "overlapp range" with pudicus, so I suggest you just ID it as purpureipennis.
Cheers, Arp Posted 7 years ago, modified 7 years ago
1. WildFlower
  
  Lion
  
  Now that you mention it, I think I can see the difference. Thanks, Arp! Posted 7 years ago