Why on earth that cheesy child puppet was singing about hemiptera I have no idea.
A couple of days ago I received a file with load of VC55 Hemiptera records. I noted that all of the records that I have sent directly to the county recorder have not as yet (and may not ever) filtered through to the overall county dataset. I'm therefore, on a very ad hoc basis, uploading old records onto NatureSpot. I've realised at the start of this that particularly in the late summer of 2013 I had a very rich period of noting bugs and hoppers from moth traps, both at home and when out and about. In particular, I've just rediscovered that I had three different Phytocoris spp. within a week or so, along with a similar looking long-legged bug. Even better, whilst I posted a couple of these on the 1k in 1km blog, none of these records have featured on here. Which is great as I have nowt else to post about today.
First up, the easiest (certainly the least subjective) one to ID ..
Miridus quadrivirgatus - Whetstone 01/08/2013
This is a moth-trap specialist in VC55
Phytocoris varipes - 02/08/2013
The longitudinal markings help to ID this one, but close scrutiny of antennal width/hairs needed
Phytocoris ulmi - Whetstone 22/07/2013
Similar to varipes but more uniformly coloured - again antennal width/hairs key
Phytocoris dimidiatus - Pickworth Great Wood 20/07/2013
This is the most contentious one - the lack of sharply defined black markings on pronotum are key, and the width of pale bands (narrower or equal to dark bands) on mid-tibia separate from similar P. longipennis ... but may not be separable from P. reuteri (which seems to have more south-easterly distribution as far as I can see).
Pseudoloxops coccineus - Whetstone 01/08/2013
Okay, not one of the long-legged ones. I've included this as it's from the same time frame and it looks great. More importantly, as far as I can see there are no earlier/other VC55 records.
