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Chrysis longula ♂? (2/2)

PostPosted: 25 May 2020 17:26
by Olger Krischan
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Re: Chrysis longula ♂? (2/2)

PostPosted: 02 Jun 2020 15:59
by Alex
Welcome to the forum Olger!

It's better if you post a single topic per specimen, and simply reply to the same topic if you need to post more pictures than is allowed per post.

I suppose it could be longula, but males in the ignita-group are very hard to ID, even when you have the specimen at hand under a microscope.
Your best chance of getting a good ID is to use the morphometric excel sheet provided as a supplementary material in "ORLOVSKYTE, BUDRYS, BUDRIENE, RADZEVICIUTE, SOON 2016 Sibling species in the Chrysis ignita complex molecular, morphological and trophic differentiation of Baltic species". However it takes a long time to use, it needs many and accurate measurements of antennal segments, mandible dimensions, puncture diameters, etc to get a good ID.

Re: Chrysis longula ♂? (2/2)

PostPosted: 02 Jun 2020 21:20
by Olger Krischan
Hi Alex,

thank you for your comments!

- Yes that's a good point about the separate posts :doh: , thx.

- I will have a look at that publication. I thought by catching a live specimen and photographing every detail I encountered in the key for sure it would reveal itself :D . Oh well, back to the drawing board. Thx!

Best regards,
Olger

Re: Chrysis longula ♂? (2/2)

PostPosted: 02 Jun 2020 22:30
by Alex
Technically it is enough to photograph the needed details, it's just that it takes a lot of effort to check them against a key or diagnosis. Even the people who basically know the differences by heart are still hesitant to give an ID, it's often not "worth it" . The risk of getting the ID wrong is high, and next to always it's extremely common species that gives little additional information to distributions, since it can be assumed they occur basically everywhere in Europe.

And when you dont have the specimen under a microscope its much harder to convince yourself that you have interpreted the characters correctly, and you also do not get the same "habitus" feel as with a real specimen.