Rounded Shield Bug
S2, Female, Face
Rounded Shield Bug
S1, Female, ventral
Animals
Plants
Info
| Rounded Shield Bug S2, Female, Face | | Rounded Shield Bug S1, Female, ventral | | ||
Animals Plants Info |
 | Class: | Animals (Animalia) - Jointed Legs (Arthropoda) - Insects (Insecta) | ||||||||||||
| Order: | True Bugs (Hemiptera) | |||||||||||||
| Family: | Stink Bug (Pentatomoidea, Pentatomidae) iNaturalist Observation | |||||||||||||
| Species: | Rounded Shield Bug (Kapunda tepperi)| This Photo: | S5, Male, face | Thank you Danilo Lüdke for confirming the id of this species for us General Species Information: Found on Ellura (in the Murray Mallee, SA) and elsewhere 1st Live Photo on-line: From ~4.5mm (males) to ~6mm (females) long. Males have concave (cup-like) rear end while females have a convex (oval) rear end. Notice the wing lengths are variable even within gender. Differentiating K. tepperi & K. troughtoni is not easy as they both vary somewhat. The easiest way to differentiate them is by the trailing edge of the pronotum (posterolateral margin); it's bent in sharpely (angulately incised) in K. troughtoni, while smoothly curved in K. tepperi. Another way is the shape of the face edges (lateral margins) in front of the eyes; they are bent in sharpely (acutely concave) in K. tepperi, while smoothly curved in K. troughtoni. But this 2nd difference is VERY prone to error as the angle of the camera has a significant impact on viewing the facial angles. Danilo said "Also the transverse depression of the pronotum and the shortened membrane (Gross 1976: never observed in K. troughtoni) indicate K. tepperi."
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