Following on from
identifying a couple of specimens of
Aphthona pallida, I was left with one small dark beetle, another
Aphthona. This was a female but also very well dissected, and keyed out quite easily as
A. melancholica - a gloomy name for a dark-coloured insect.
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| Aphthona melancholica - female with genitalia dissected out. |
As you can imagine, as the beetle is only about 2.5mm long, the genitalia you can see in the above photo are not large. They tend not to be as useful for identification as those of males (as the differences between species are so slight), but can be helpful and are included in some keys such as Doguet (1994). The structure visible here is the spermatheca - the structure that receives and stores sperm.
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| Spermatheca of A. melancholica |
Reference
Doguet, S. (1994).
Faune de France 80 – Coléoptères Chrysomelidae,
Volume 2: Alticinae. Federation Francaise des Sociétes de Science
Naturelles, Paris. [in French]
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