Toe-biter Water Scorpion
S1, Adult, Head
Toe-biter Water Scorpion
S1, Adult, Forearm, ventral
Animals
Plants
Info
| Toe-biter Water Scorpion S1, Adult, Head | | Toe-biter Water Scorpion S1, Adult, Forearm, ventral | | ||
Animals Plants Info |
 | Class: | Animals (Animalia) - Jointed Legs (Arthropoda) - Insects (Insecta) | ||||||||||||
| Order: | True Bugs (Hemiptera) | |||||||||||||
| Family: | Water Scorpions (Nepomorpha: Nepidae) iNaturalist Observation | |||||||||||||
| Species: | Toe-biter Water Scorpion (Laccotrephes tristis)| This Photo: | 🔍S1, Adult, Forearm, dorsal🔎 | Thank you Wojciech Duda (rzeczpospolita) for confirming the id of this species for us General Species Information: Found on Ellura (in the Murray Mallee, SA) and elsewhere ~29mm long. Unfortunately the only specimen we've found was very old, dead & desicated; but still include it here for completeness. It constantly amazes us how many water born insects we find here, particularly on our roof & gutters; yet we are kms from any standing water & over 10kms from the Murray River. However, the natural behaviours of these critters is to randomly fly desperately looking for a mate. They have no idea when they start if they are going to find a water hole or desert. The 2 large structures at the front are not antennae, but it's front arms. The main clue to this is that insects have 6 legs, this one only had 4 others. Of course here, it's missing 2 legs, but you can see in the ventral shot where the 4 legs were. Searching on line you can see how the large powerful legs open up; here they are folded. The largest part is the femur. The coxa is relatively short. The legs are required to hold prey as these bugs are predators. The common name is a bit of misnomer. They don't have mandibles, or a mouth, so can't bite. They have a proboscis, a straw like structure, for sucking up juices. As such, they stab (quite painfully apparantly), not bite. They don't have any venom, so don't sting as such; certainly not with their tail which is used for breathing underwater. The tail isn't an ovipositor. These resemble the Giant Water Bug (Lethocerus insulanus) which are not found in Southern Australia and are in a different family. Visibly they have a much shorter tail. They are also about twice the size of these water scorpions (which we thought was large!).
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