Bulbous Antennae Clerid
Anterior
Ellura
Transverse Ladybird
Larva, dorsal
 
                      
Bulbous Antennae Clerid (Sedlacekvia sp)Class: Animals (Animalia) - Jointed Legs (Arthropoda) - Insects (Insecta)
Order: Beetles (Coleoptera)
Family: Clerid Beetle (Cleridae)     iNaturalist Observation
Species: Bulbous Antennae Clerid (Sedlacekvia sp)
This Photo:     Ventral

Thank you Mark Hura for identifying this species for us

General Species Information:
Found on Ellura (in the Murray Mallee, SA) and elsewhere
1st Live Photo on-line:
This is a rare find. We thought it was Sedlacekvia tanamica, but Mark suggests it might be an undescribed species. That's not to say it is rare, but doesn't seem to be found by people very much. Very little is known about them.
To the naked eye it looks just like an ant, but because it was on concrete the large antennae stood out and we thought it was a small Ant-nest Beetle. But closer inspection shows quite different antennae, bulbous rather than filamented. At only 4-5mm tip to tail, it's fairly small. Overall it is dark brown and hairy, with dark red patches on it's shoulders.
Not well studied, there have been records of the genus in NT (near Uluru), Victoria & NSW; along with this one & some Mark found in SA.
Mark said " the elytral apices are interesting. The apices in S. tanamica are attenuated, whereas in S. kinchegaensis they are rounded. Mine are definitely rounded and the 2 elytrons meet neatly together at the apex when closed. Yours appears somewhat in between - rounded but also slightly attenuated, not to the extreme of the type though: https://collections.museumsvictoria.com.au/specimens/1023001
This is one of the things I mentioned earlier about having one or only a few specimens in a type series - you can't really gauge the range of variability.
Other differences between the 2 include the punctures on the humeral angles (shoulders) of the elytron - bare in S. tanamica but regularly punctured in S. kinchegaensis and pronotum with a small bare, shiny patch on S. tanamica, but densely punctured throughout on S. kinchegaensis."
Mark found one over near Bakara in Dec.

Copyright © 2018-2024 Brett & Marie Smith. All Rights Reserved. Photographed 24-Oct-2018
This species is an Australian Native Species, not listed in the SA Murray Mallee Survey of 2010.