Wingless Coreid Bug
S3, Male, ventral
Ellura
Eucalyptus Bug
Adult + Instar
 
                      
Wingless Coreid Bug (Agriopocoris froggatti)Class: Animals (Animalia) - Jointed Legs (Arthropoda) - Insects (Insecta)
Order: True Bugs (Hemiptera)
Family: Leaf Footed Bug (Coreoidea, Coreidae)     iNaturalist Observation
Species: Wingless Coreid Bug (Agriopocoris froggatti)
This Photo:     🔍S4, Female, ventral🔎

Thank you Danilo Lüdke for identifying this species for us

General Species Information:
Found on Ellura (in the Murray Mallee, SA), the Adelaide Hills and elsewhere
~10mm long males, ~13mm long female, chocolate brown and very spiny. Males have a narrower abdomen than the females.
The speciemen we recently found at Ellura is slightly longer and has some minor differences in colour, shown here as S3. Possibly location variations, or a different species.
Tony Daley on Bowerbird said "There are a couple of differences in the form of the abdomen to separate the wingless adults from the similar nymphs, but easiest to point to is the two pairs of abdominal dorsal scent glands down the middle which are active in nymphs and thus clearly seen but not active, and thus not distinguished from surrounding surface in colour, in adults."
The scent glands Tony refers appear like 4 black lumps in the nymphs that are missing from our two specimens.
These can have wings, makes them look quite different.
Danilo said "A. dollingi (known only from WA) and A. porcellus are out as the shape of the male abdomen is different (connexival segment VII) and the remaining A. chadwicki is not confirmed for SA and differs in lacking the bristle-bearing tubercles, the legs and the lateral margins of the pronotum are rather smooth. And this leaves us with A. froggatti"
Agriopocoris porcellus also occurs in SA, and the nymphs of A. porcellus & A. froggatti can't be seperated. In relation to this, Danilo also said "I believe that the high density of slender thorns ( = setigerous tubercles) on the surface will not be found in nymphs of porcellus and chadwickii, but this is what I believe and not a proof."
Danilo said "Literature says that most of them are found on Acacia or related Leguminosae." One assumes this is their preferred food source.

Copyright © 2024 Brett & Marie Smith. All Rights Reserved. Photographed 31-Oct-2024
This species is an Australian Native Species, not listed in the SA Murray Mallee Survey of 2010.