Long-spined Shield Bug
S2, Female, Spine Teeth
Long-spined Shield Bug
S1, Male, Ventral Keel
Animals
Plants
Info
| Long-spined Shield Bug S2, Female, Spine Teeth | | Long-spined Shield Bug S1, Male, Ventral Keel | | ||
Animals Plants Info |
 | Class: | Animals (Animalia) - Jointed Legs (Arthropoda) - Insects (Insecta) | ||||||||||||
| Order: | True Bugs (Hemiptera) | |||||||||||||
| Family: | Stink Bug (Pentatomoidea, Pentatomidae) iNaturalist Observation | |||||||||||||
| Species: | Long-spined Shield Bug (Cuspicona longispina)| This Photo: | S1, Male, posterior | Thank you Thomas Mesaglio (TheBeachConber) 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: Basically a green bug, ~6mm long, Adult & Nymph. The one adult we found has an orange head, yellow go stripes that form a 'v' on it's back, with white under The main diagnostic features are the massive horns/spindes protruding up & slightly forward from it's pronotum, as well as the horizonal black band made by punctuations across the pronotum (between the horns). Of interest is the large ventral keel. While this occurs to some degree in some other shield bugs, here the proboscis is pushed to one side. It also had a habit of folding it's antennae underneath. Pinned specimens loose their striking colours, becoming a pale brown. Live photo's in this case make field recognition so much easier Notice how different the colour of the Nymph is. We think the nymph is a 5th instar female based on the fact it has wing buds, shape of posterior & lack of a "keel". Originally we thought it was Neagenor, perhaps N. spinosus, but it's body seemed too rounded & the antennae didn't fit. We've selected this species for the nymph because: 1. The spines seems to match the adult pretty well. 2. The front of the "face" is wide & rounded, unlike the other spiny Cuspiconas we get in SA. 3. We've had the adult here before. While the nymphs lost one antennae (found like that) the black "tear" on the underside isn't damage. It's symetrical on both sides. So just the shape of it's shell.
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