Wednesday, June 02, 2010

Mystery True Bug ( Lopidea sp. )


Saw a whole bunch of these today covering the fence outside my local park. I have no idea what they are. The only thing I do know is the classification and the species: Lopidea sp.

I was originally thinking that these were either Lopidea media or L. davisi but the placing of the yellow stripe on the thorax of L. davisi is thicker and somewhat different then the ones in the photo. Plus the head is also yellow.

While on Lopidea media the stripe is completely absent. Photos here. Surprisingly enough this bug is bugging everyone ( pun intended ). Everyone on Bugguide wants to narrow this bastard down to species. It still remains under "unidentified".

Funnily enough I was hoping that I could change that but I too am coming up dry.

Here's what I do know:

~~ They're in the genius Lopidea
~~ They're are Lopidea sp. that feed on Black locust
~~ There was a black locust right behind that fence they were swarming on

So what I was thinking of is if someone could some how narrow down all the Lopidea sp. that feed on black locust and maybe we'll find it...??

Idk but I'm going to do some poking around. This mystery will be solved eventually.

Until next time my pretties!!

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