Snakefly - Agulla sp.

I've narrowed this down to Agulla herbsti or Agulla assimilis
with herbsti having a shorter stigma as the differentiator...
the only photos I could find are dried, pinned specimens, https://www.zoology.ubc.ca/~biodiv/entomology_archive/Raphidioptera/Raphidiidae/
I have a hard time finding much physical difference between the two...

comments (7)

Jivko Nakev

Lion

What a weird creature!
Posted 7 years ago
1. Ferdy Christant
  
  Lion
  
  Indeed they are, and not commonly documented:
  https://www.jungledragon.com/wildlife/photos/animalia/arthropoda/insecta/raphidioptera Posted 7 years ago

Christine Young

Lion

Great find! I’ve never seen one of these in nature! Posted 7 years ago

Pudding4brains

Lion

Excellent to see one from the other side of the world - thanks for that Morpheme! :o)
I'll add some tagging and will have a look if I can find IDing info, but I'm afraid I don't have much for the Americas ...
Cheers, Arp Posted 7 years ago
1. morpheme
  
  Lion
  
  That would be great if you can find anything. I settled for the genus when the page on BugGuide said this...
  
  " The opus magnum by the Aspocks is probably the best reference currently available...but very hard to obtain, with a major emphasis on male genitalia (thus not very useful for the vast majority of our field photos), and of limited utility for those who can't read German." LOL... Posted 7 years ago
2. 1. Pudding4brains
    
    Lion
    
    Yes, I had the book here once, on loan from a library and I'm pretty sure I've copied/scanned parts of it, but need to find these back. Generally focus will be on genitalia for ID and describing species, but for many species there are sufficient secondary characters to make ID from photos possible once you've seen enough specimen of each species to be aware of individual variations. Of course I have not had such luck to be able to study American specimen, so it will always be more iffy, but it would be an interesting exercise nevertheless, once I find my copies back ;o)
    Here's an example demo I created of individual variation/aberrations in one species:
    https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/78/Puncha_ratzeburgi_aberrations_-_collection_Naturalis.jpg
    Posted 7 years ago

Ferdy Christant

Lion

What do you think of this one:
https://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/60043-Agulla-adnixa/browse_photos

Looks similar and almost all of those observations are exclusive to the west of the USA. Posted 6 years ago

No species identified

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