Green Dock-Beetle (Gastrophysa cyanea) - Gravid female

Curly dock plant overloaded with these beetles (both males and females).

comments (10)

Christine Young

Lion

I wonder if she can still fly like that?! Posted 5 years ago
1. Flown Kimmerling
  
  Lion
  
  I'm not sure. There were several on this plant, and the majority of them were being mounted by males. LOL Posted 5 years ago
2. Pudding4brains
  
  Lion
  
  Both our Gastrophysa species (viridula and polygoni) are horrible fliers to begin with - I have hardly ever seen one try and on the one or two occasions that I did it flew less than one yard and rather uncoordinated it would seem. So I think it's fair to assume that a gravid female wouldn't get anywhere if she tried, but she would probably never try. They're great walkers though and can disperse quite effectively that way. Posted 5 years ago, modified 5 years ago
3. 1. Christine Young
    
    Lion
    
    Poor girl. I'm sure she doesn't even feel like waddling around at this point. Posted 5 years ago

Pudding4brains

Lion

Made me learn something today Lisa - I never realized that your "Green Dock-beetle" (despite the name cyanea) is so similar to our "Green Dock-beetle" (viridula). Also, the JD system seems to be confused by it, as it has also added the tag for 17Gastrophysa viridula to your beetle - I've removed that now. Both can still be found for the tag with the vernacular name though, which is totally correct in itself, strictly speaking :o) Posted 5 years ago
1. Ferdy Christant
  
  Lion
  
  You beat me to it. I was wondering if this...
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gastrophysa_viridula
  
  ...is a synonym. Looks like it's not. It's best I remove the common name from the species records as its ambiguous. That will not entirely solve the problem though if people identify by the common name in the future, the system cannot possibly know which is the correct one, and will return Wikipedia's first result. This is why it's always preferred to ID by the binomial name, it's more reliable. I know most of us do that already, just saying. Posted 5 years ago, modified 5 years ago
2. 1. Pudding4brains
    
    Lion
    
    They're not synonyms. What we can opt for is to do something like:
    Green Dock-Beetle (Nearctic)
    Green Dock-Beetle (Palearctic)
    or
    Green Dock-Beetle (G. viridula)
    Green Dock-Beetle (G. cyanea)
    
    Posted 5 years ago
  2. 1. Ferdy Christant
      
      Lion
      
      That's a great idea, done. When people now type this common name, these suggestions pop up. In case they ignore the suggestions, don't pick either, and forcefully go ahead with "Green Dock-Beetle", it will map to viridula, which statistically will most often be correct. Posted 5 years ago
    2. 1. Pudding4brains
        
        Lion
        
        Excellent - I've taken the liberty to update the tags on the existing images accordingly ...
        1Green Dock-Beetle (G. cyanea)
        16Green Dock-Beetle (G. viridula) Posted 5 years ago
      2. Ferdy Christant
        
        Lion
        
        Yeah, thanks for cleaning up after me :) Posted 5 years ago