Gminatus australis assassin

Hemipteran bug of orange/red colour with black wings. There are a number of tubercles on the pronotum. Legs are slender and the ventral abdomen is black.
15 mm body length

comments (5)

Pudding4brains

Lion

Hi Ruth, I have added Gminatus wallengreni and Gminatus australis to our JD repository as Q&D stubs. It seems to me your photo might actually more likely show G. australis, but I'm not 100% sure about the true diagnostic characters for both.
I'll ID it as australis for now, based on the red femora on the fore legs, but will search a little more ... Cheers, Arp

P.S. Ruth, you write: "The ventral abdomen is also black.". Is that your own observation on this individual or did you copy that from a species description of Gminatus wallengreni ?!? Posted 6 years ago, modified 6 years ago
1. Ruth Spigelman
  
  Lion
  
  My own observation. Thank you for all of this input/help. Posted 6 years ago
2. 1. Pudding4brains
    
    Lion
    
    Very interesting - thanks for answering that! The black ventral side of abdomen supposedly is a good character for Gminatus wallengreni, but in all images of that species that I more or less trust the ID of the legs are completely black - in G. australis I seem to see both black and red femora ... so ... back to the drawing board. Posted 6 years ago
  2. 1. Ruth Spigelman
      
      Lion
      
      I noticed that as well on my journey trying to ID this. Shall we go for red forelegs, or black abdomen ha ha. Is there a possibility that colours change as the insect matures? For example, I noticed the tubercles on the pronotum have not turned fully black on this specimen. Posted 6 years ago
    2. 1. Pudding4brains
        
        Lion
        
        Not sure if it is possible to ID these (yet), but I'm still working on it, but need to do it in scarce time at night when I can concentrate on reading. These seem to be _very_ variable in colour (extensiveness of black) on head, pronotum and legs. Especially australis has been described many times as new species that were later sunk into synonymy, but all the descriptions provide clues to the variability of the species. Still need to chew on that for a while ... Posted 6 years ago

The Orange Assassin Bug

Gminatus australis (Erichson, 1842) is an Assassin Bug (Reduviidae) in the subfamily Harpactorinae, native to Australia. It can be easily confused with Gminatus wallengreni Stål, 1859.

Info 12 0

Similar species: True Bugs

Species identified by Pudding4brains