Favoritos de rogue_biologist

White Mountains, Ancient Bristlecone Pine Forest.
Elev. 10,000 ft
Through my camera's eyepiece, I could only see what appeared to be a predator prey situation between some insects. The animals were moving about in such a rapid tumble that only after I saw the photos did I realize what was going on.

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.