Favoritos de rogue_biologist

One of many Heteropogon of this species out today, but this one had a curious interaction: I watched it sit next to the beetle, then fly around nearby in the hovering (courtship?) dance, and then sit again. It seemed like it was trying to court the beetle?! Maybe just because of the visual similarity since the beetle was sitting on a twig tip like the Heteropogon do. Or maybe some pheromone mixup? I managed to save both specimens, I’ll make a duplicate for the beetle when I can get better photos of it for ID.

I finally looked at these under a lens and wow, the males are so cool looking! I finally see why Martin named the species “mica”! The spatulate abdomen is remarkable, too. So I've duplicated this observation to show them off.

As Martin's description says: tergite 2 brown tomentose on posterior 2/3, tergites 3-6 densely gray stippled pollinose, tergites 1-3 with short reddish yellow hair, middle of mystax with some orange hairs, tibiae red.

Saw dozens of these little shiny brown Holopogon out on palo verde or mesquite twig tips about head high down near the (dry) wash. Specimens in coll. These are closely related to the shiny blue species also out now (sapphirus), and this is the type locality. I think this is just my second time finding this species (also once outside Madera canyon in 2019).

Found some Heteropogon on my way out of the Leptogaster site at sunset. One regular H. paurosomus on a tree twig, then one male (here) and female of this super fuzzy and big species perching on some waist-high grasses in the field. I put a leg from each in ethanol.

Identifying these was a trick— Wilcox didn’t include the species in his keys because it was only known from Mexico at the time. So they key out near H. johnsoni, and I think a bunch of the specimens in the UAIC are misID’d as such because they were just working through the key. But johnsoni males supposedly have a black tuft on the middle tibiae (like many other Heteros), which these don’t. And Eric Fisher at least believes H. divisus comes up here— he included it in the draft checklist and has iD’d them on Bugguide as such (e.g., https://bugguide.net/node/view/1739923). This one seems a little orange (especially vs the white female) but I guess that sometimes happens.

ID tentative; improvement welcomed.
Another exciting find!
Possibly E. formosa or E. pubera?
It moved when I got too close and landed nearby. That worked a couple of times, but then it had enough and vanished.

A very odd Leptogaster I found last month. Doesn't seem to match any species in the Martin 1957 monograph, and there aren't any specimens with genitalia like this in the UAIC, either. I got this mating pair this day in September and then one other male three weeks later in October, all spotted flying through grass under the same tree by the side of the dry wash. Specimens in my collection, with legs in EtOH. Posting here in case anyone starts working on Leptogastrinae and gets curious.

Update: I heard back from Eric Fisher: "Your Leptogaster looks unusual and my guess is that it is new. I looked through my material on hand (I have 30 identified US species of the genus [...] Of course, it could be something unknown to us, from Mexico." Torsten Dikow also sent me a preliminary response saying he didn't know it offhand and would check specimens sometime.

So hunch confirmed that it's an odd one.