Hi Paul, thanks for the interesting reply! Of course, I only have one year's worth of "experience" and hardly no larva-literature at all. If I winn the lottery the first thing I do is order the old Hodek (the newer one doesn't seem to list the larvae anymore?). So all I (believe to) "know" comes from limited experience (fieldwork and breeding) and looking around on the web.
But there is/was not much ladybird larva stuff to be found on the web. I think I've personally updated "the web" with two or three larva species that had no images yet last spring and was pleasantly surprised to find some of these now also in the
Flickr gallery of Gilles San Martin you linked to somewhere. So the web is getting better all the time
A somewhat complicated key, and unfortunatelly for some - in dutch, is located here:
Page 1,
Page 2,
Page 3. The site also holds a
Larva Thumbnails Page and a few "Quick reference" charts
here:
Ada.bip.,
Ada.dec.,
Coc.sep.,
Har.axy.,
Ana.oce.,
Cal.qua. and
Hal.sed..
Going by their key/quick ref the difference is in the side-brushes indicated on my diagram too. Concerning the Ab4i brushes they mostly state that the brushes have more black on the outer half of the brush for
Ada.bip. (compare the Quickrefs), but I always found that very unreliable on real animals.
Ada.dec. is generally much "lighter" of colour than
Ada.bip., in that the inter-brush "gray" areas also tend to be a lighter shade of gray (sometimes almost white).
I'll be checking for the colour differences noted by the Majerus key now too
However, as it seems, the Ab4i colouration isn't always present - at least on
Ada.bip. it may not be. I've bought an old booklet by Klausnitzer this fall that has some larval info aswell, and he lists about 9 different colour combinations for
Ada.bip. larvae (in black and white). My feeble attempt of a diagram was the result of trying to create an overview of these in colour and finding photos of the varieties to go with that, but I had tossed in the corner a few month ago as I wasn't happy with the diagrams at all and better ones would take too much time.
Well, so much for now. Maybe I'll still go ahead and create the overview sometime soon - will see.
Thanks for your input Paul - much appreciated!
Arp