[ID, pinned] Miridae: Orthotylus prasinus

[Jason Green]

Afternoon all,

I've been busy dissecting my last Orthotytlus specimens. Didn't take long, I only had one other - O. marginalis! This one was beaten from cherry-laurel growing at the roadside bordering woodland on the 11th of July this year. I believe it's Orthotylus prasinus as the paramere matches the literature with the inward-curved, toothed edge. One thing that surprises me though, is the large and ornate aedeagus not getting a mention. See below.

11/07/2011

Dorsal, aedeagus and staged set-up

Is it just that the paramere differs more to the aedeagus in separating this and ochotrichus et al.? As to the hostplant - prasinus uses Elm, not sure why I found it on Cherry - I think I can recollect Elm as the next shrubbery, however.

Thanks for reading.

Take care,

Jason

[Jason Green]

Hi all,

I've just looked at another that I assumed was tenellus, without checking the basics - well, I hadn't written-out a label, so nothing was set in stone yet. Anyway, it was male so I thought that to provide further comparative material I should dissect. So, I did - and which was this? Another prasinus! Except:

• The wings are more yellow (including forewing's leading-edge);
• The right-paramere is deeper-toothed;
• There was no notable aedeagus inside (compare to seaweed-shaped thing above!);
• There are more teeth anong the lower inside-edge of the left-paramere than I found on the specimen above;
• I beat it from an Umbellifer.

Odd. Probably all due to individual variability, but something I will have to spend more time on tomorrow.

[asheleaf]

just wanted to say I'm enjoying your posts (they are over my head but I find them none-the-less fascinating)

thanks for taking the time

Ashe

[Jason Green]

Thanks Ashe!

Having spent som more time on this one last night, the only consistent thing between the two specimens has been the laft paramere (=clasper, the way the male holds the female sexually during mating/copulation). As you see, there was no big aedeagus this time, nor was the form of the right-clasper the same as the first specimen. Looking at the fore-wings, there are the same features such as a stronger colour along the costal-cell and shape, but a pretty different ground colour replacing said areas. I thought maybe the dark spots of wing-coloured pigment on the clear membrane around the closed cells may be useful, but they were positioned differently too.