Larva I guess, but of what?

[Ratatoskr]

This was shot today, in the Alicante area of Spain, close to the mountains.
I'm guessing it's a larva, but of what?
It's 1.5cm long, stretch out, and was found walking around on the ground. The soil is, as usual with my Spain photos, very arid and hard (whitish color ground).
This creatures body is of a leathery soft skin that seems to be too big for him, which I guess means it's going to feed itself much larger in body size. Touching it feels like thin skin pouch.



Thanks for any guidance to where to look, or maybe even to what this might be.

Hope you all had a great New Years Eve.

Regards,
Mats

[Pudding4brains]

Hi Mats,

I was about to throw something in the Chrysomelidae, probably Chrysolina or some such your way, but the indicated size made me wonder, so I had a second look and only then noticed the rather long habitus. The larvae of Chrysolina look a lot like this up front, but are all much shorter (no images on WATW I think, but comparable to the grubs of the Colorado Beetle). Edit: and here are some Chrysolina, but a rather young/small ones.

Anyway, this is not one of those. I'm now thinking it'll be the larva (probably female) of one of the Meloidae they have down south; a family that I'm not at all familiar with - never even seen an adult myself. Images of larvae seem to be scarce for this family, but maybe searching with the various generic names from the region will yield better results. I only did a quick "Larva Meloidae" and found this page that seems to somewhat confirm my suspicion of Meloidae, so I'll leave it that. With my non-existent experience with those I shouldn't attempt to take it any further anyway.

Cheers, Arp

P.S. To avoid confusion, please note that the ladies of many Meloidae are somewhat "larviform" to the casual observer, so grub-like critters with relatively small elytra, such as this lady are not larvae but adults

[paul m]

I've looked at this several times but was rather hoping someone else would commit themself first - thanks Arp. My first thought was meloid (Meloidea, oil beetles) - the size, fat abdomen and uniform greyish 'skin'. However, I can't find any pictures or other illustrations of this, not even at Meloidae—Databanka fotografií brouk?, jiného hmyzu, rostlin, hub a dal?ích organism? z celého sv?ta .

My fallback was some sort of chrysomelid but can't think of any that large ....

[Pudding4brains]

If Chrosomelid it would have to be something Timarcha-ish size wise (like here or here). Those are actually a tad longer in habitus than I would have thought. My idée fixe of those was more along the lines of this and this one.

Hmm, maybe I should have checked for Timarcha larvae before writing anything - now I'm not too sure about it being a Meloidae Not saying that it isn't, but some of those Timarcha might actually come close to the same longish habitus and the apex of the abdomen might even be a better fit But indeed not many images of Meloe etc larvae to be found ...

Also, are we really sure the longish "Timarcha" are IDed correctly? Especially the one on the Spanish site, as they have plenty of the big-ish Meloidae too

[paul m]

Arp, you may not have given enough consideration to Timarcha but I forgot about it altogether! These pictures look spot on - including the facial features/appendages and, as you say, the situation sounds better for dry, grassland chrysomelids.

[Ratatoskr]

Here I go with my thoughts :P

After reading both your posts and searching around in databases AND on Google search, I must say that Timarcha genus seems right on. "Mine" has the same very red back part that it uses as help to crawl forward with as I see the ones on images in the DB's and Google images having. The form and size is also so much like "mine".

After having looked as so many different species of Timarcha it seems to me (I know, a non educated way of thinking. I'm probably so wrong again) as if the larvae of this species gets the same color and luster as it later gets as a grown up beetle. In my case it has a very metallic brownish/gold luster on the skin and the only one (of course, of the ones I've seen images of) I have found with the correct color as grown up is the T. metallica. Problem is that the DB's I've looked in the distribution is for central Europe. I don't give that too much weight always as I've found a lot of species that have not been registered in the area I've found them, but this might be a bit far from what the DB's say.
I've looked at these photos where the beetle has the same color as my larva:
http://www.koleopterologie.de/galler...o2-benisch.jpg
EU Insekten - Timarcha metallica - - - Blattkäfer - Käfer (bottom one)

I'm just waiting to hear why my thinking is all wrong :P

Thanks for the fantastic help you guys provide.

Btw, if any of you have seen my post on the Hare ID, I have some experts that have studied the mitochondrial DNA of the different species explaining to me what it could be. I will soon post on the results.

Ow, I forgot...
A person at Biodiversidadvirtual forum also said Timarcha, and suggested it MAY be T. espanoli.

AND, I have a lot more macros on this species if you feel the need to see more.

[Pudding4brains]

Hi guys,

With many species migrating/expanding these days it's always good to keep your options open, but I usually limit it to species found rather nearby (+/- adjacent). Also, most expansion seems to be from the south to the north these days so I would be hesitant to look for a central European beetle in Spain - especially larvae, which usually means settlement as opposed to a possible disoriented adult traveler.

As for the color, yes sometimes larval color can be slightly indicative of the imago as well, but I find that more often it is not or even contradicting. Personally, I don't do a whole lot with beetles and my experience with Chrysomelid larvae is rather limited. Did a few Chrysolina and as far as I could tell those can not be easily told apart (but didn't study them side by side under a microscope) and it doesn't matter if the beetle will be steel blue or metalic green or multicolor - all the larvae I've seen of Chrysolina where blackish, becoming a tad more translucent shortly before (=bloated) and after (=fresh) moulting. Then again, the Colorado Beetle larvae (linked above somewhere) are not blackish and approach the imago colors varying between beige and orange during their cycles. The few other Chrysomelidae I've reared had very different larval shapes. In general, maybe, there is some connection between "pale" larvae rendering paler beetles and dark/black larvae rendering dark green/blue/black beetles but looking for color nuances is bound to get you your nose bumped, even if it might turn out right on occasion. Just my layman's thoughts though, as stated I have way too little experience with these.

Seeing that I had trouble even getting the Family right I should better refrain from further suggestions for the species

As for the Hare - I was mostly impressed with you getting close enough for those images - no opinion about the hybridization and differences between male A + female B or vice-versa. With hybrids between sheep and goat or horse and donkey being possible, hybridization between two types of Hares does not seem surprising, but if the offspring can procreate one starts wondering if the "species" are valid or if those should be reduced to being races/variants of the same species.

Thanks for sharing your images and thoughts
Cheers, Arp

P.S. Concerning your offer of more images; yes I would very much appreciate one or two more for future reference, such as a better angle on the apex of the abdomen. Larval stages of most beetles species are rather scarce on the Internet, so always good to add to the pool

[Ratatoskr]

Here are three more photos:

[Ratatoskr]

Thanks Arp for the last post.

As for both Hare species in Sweden, it has been proven that the hybrids do function perfectly normally and do procreate. But, I will give a more detailed post in the correct thread in a week or two, when I'm back home.

Best wishes,
Mats

[Pudding4brains]

Thanks for the extra images Mats

(Nothing of the tail end?)

Cheers, Arp

[Ratatoskr]

A bad quality photo, but the only photo I have of the tail end.

[Pudding4brains]

Thanks Mats, I do think that is helpful as the drawing of the Meloidae larva does seem to suggest a slightly different shape bum