Helophilus pendulus (Linnaeus 1758)

I realise that there have been a lot of invertebrates lately... I'll interrupt this with a reptile or amphibian soon... but not today.

Onwards!

(Bear in mind that 'not a...' sections are incomplete, and intended as a rough guide to what an organism is not rather than a detailed map)
Eukaryota - not a bacteria (Prokaryota) or a member of the Archaea
  Animalia - not a plant, a fungus or a member of any of the various Protist groups
    Eumetazoa - not a sponge...
      Bilateralia - not a coral, jellyfish, etc (Radiata or Cnidaria)
       Nephrozoa - not an acoelomorph flatworm (Acoelomorpha), usually.
          Protostomia - not a vertebrate, sea-squirt, or echinoderm (all Deuterostomia)...
            Ecdysozoa - not a mollusc or any of various worms...
              Arthropoda - not a nematode worm either...
                Hexapoda - not a millipede (Myriapoda), Spider, Scorpion or horseshoe crab (Chelicerata) or Crustacean.
                  Insecta - not a springtail (Collembola)
                    Dicondylia - not a jumping bristletail (Archaeognatha)
                      Pterygota - not a bristletail or silverfish (Thysanura)
                        Manopterygota - not a mayfly or extinct relative (Palaeoptera)
                          Neoptera - not a dragonfly or damselfly (Odonata)
                            Eumetabola - not a cockroach, termite or mantis (Dictyoptera), cricket or grasshopper (Orthoptera), Earwig (Dermaptera) or stick insect (Phasmatodea).
                              Endopterygota - not a true bug (Hemiptera) or bark-louse (Psocoptera)
                                Panorpida - Not a beetle (Coleoptera), Wasp (Hymenoptera), Lacewing (Neuroptera), snakefly (Raphidioptera) or alderfly (Megaloptera).
                                  Antliophora - not a butterfly or moth (Lepidoptera) or Caddis-fly (Trichoptera).
                                    Diptera - not a scorpion fly (Mecoptera) or flea (Siphonaptera).
                                      Brachycera - not a crane-fly or mosquito (Nematocera)
                                        Muscomorpha - not a horse-fly (Tabanomorpha) or Robber-fly (Asilomorpha)
                                          Aschiza - not a house-fly, blow-fly, grass-fly, fruit-fly or various other Schizophora
                                            Syrphoidea - not a coffin-fly or relative (Platypezoidea)
                                              Syrphidae - not a 'big-headed fly' (Pipunculidae).
                                                Eristalinae... not a member of Syrphinae (most hoverflies) or Microdontinae (a small, atypical subfamily of hoverflies)
                                                  Eristalini...
                                                    Helophilina... not a member of the Eristalini, the drone-flies...
 

Helophilus pendulus

(Linnaeus 1758)

     

 

Known to some as 'The Footballer', apparently due to its boldly striped thorax. On that basis, I'd be tempted to call it 'The Ref' instead... but Helophilus (~Heh-loh-fill-us - literally 'bog-lover', due to its association with damp habitats) is easy enough to say, and avoids the complications inherent to 'I just saw a footballer in the pond'. 

Their bright colours seem to serve the purpose of convincing potential predators that they are dangerous, when, in fact, they are harmless (Read: no sting, no bite) pollinators with filter-feeding larvae. Of the several British species of Helophilus, this species is by far the most common.

That's all, folks.

(Identified by comparison of leg and abdomen colouring to images of known members of the genus with overlapping ranges. No specific site or reference employed).

Ligia oceanica (Linnaeus 1767)

... I'm a little tired of the rambling pre-amble, so I'm limiting it to one paragraph and the taxonomy. As such, on with the show:

Eukaryota ...has nuclear membrane, various cell organelles...
  Animalia... is an animal...
    Eumetazoa...isn't a sponge... My continuing apologies to poriferophiles...
      Bilateralia... enjoys only one line of symmetry...
        Nephrozoa... depending on phylogeny followed, isn't an acoelomorph flatworm...
          Protostomia... cell fate in embryo is fixed (in most taxa)...
            Ecdysozoa... sheds skin... not unique to the group, but it's in the name...
              Arthropoda...has a jointed exoskeleton, or is descended from something with one...
                Crustacea... is related to crabs, lobsters, etc...
                  Malacostraca... is more closely related to crabs than, say, triops...
                    Eumalacostraca... is more closely related to crabs than mantis shrimp...
                      Peracarida... isn't a crab. Or a lobster. Or a shrimp.
                        Isopoda... is related to woodlice.
                          Oniscidea... is a woodlouse...
                            Diplocheta... isn't a traditional woodlouse...
                              Ligiidae... is a member of one of the various groups occasionally known as 'slaters'

Ligia oceanica

(Linnaeus 1767)

...is a sea-slater. Otherwise known as this: 

  
Widely distributed across the north Atlantic (and attached seas) coasts, this is a semi-marine woodlouse, rarely found any distance from the shore. It munches on various algaes (particularly bladder-wrack, apparently), detritus and microscopic organisms at night, and hides under stones and in crevices during the day.

It's also the UK's largest woodlouse, reaching an inch or so in length. 

Melolontha melolontha (Linnaeus, 1758)

Beetles....

British Beetles...

What to say about British Beetles...

Regular readers (hypothetically speaking), might remember me rambling without direction about the diversity of flies and beetles in this post (About the lovely and bizarre Diasemopsis meigenii). Well, we're going to expand a little bit on that here.

As a resident of the UK, I am both cursed and blessed where entomology is concerned - cursed because three of the biggest reasons to have low diversity of wildlife are: a) being an island; b) being a long way from the tropics and therefore having a history of ice-ages wiping out the local wildlife; and c) being a densely populated and heavily developed part of Europe, where people have been disturbing wildlife as heavily as they can since just before the ice left. Blessed, however, because this limited fauna is one of the best studied on the planet, which makes it much easier to identify most species without breaking the bank.

It is also one of the few places in the world where the known species of fly greatly outnumber the known species of beetle, and this, in concert with its uniquely well-studied fauna, is one point of support for flies being more diverse than beetles.

This brings me - finally - to my point. Flies are - as the name suggests - mostly quite good at flying, if only because their bodies are so light that they need very little energy to stay in the air. This gets them blown across such insignificant bodies of water as the English Channel with a frequency much higher than, say, large beetles.

It does have a handful (some of which, like the greater stag-beetle (Lucanus cervus), are in a fairly alarming decline because of the incompatibility of a large population which burns all available wood in the winter and a beetle that spends several years as a larva inside dead wood and doesn't survive being burnt), and today's subject is probably the most frequently encountered of that handful...

Eukaryota
  Animalia
    Eumetazoa
      Bilateralia
        Nephrozoa
          Protostomia
            Ecdysozoa
              Arthropoda
                Hexapoda
                  Insecta
                    Dicondylia
                      Pterygota
                        Manopterygota
                          Neoptera
                            Eumetabola
                              Endopterygota
                                Coleopterida
                                  Coleoptera
                                    Polyphaga
                                      Scarabaeiformia - Beetles that are like scarab beetles
                                        Scarabaeoidea - Scarabs and friends
                                          Scarabaeidae - Scarab beetles
                                            Melolonthinae - Chafer beetles...
                                              Melolonthini

Melolontha melolontha

 (Linnaeus, 1758)

 Also known as the Common Cockchafer, it had gone through a period of being not-that-common (Europeans have been very fond of pesticides for almost as long as Americans), but is making a sort-of-recovery lately. There is one very similar species in the UK, which is distinguished by having a blunt, rounded tip to its abdomen, rather than the rather pointed one of this species (not visible in either photograph displayed here).

A more informative view of the same (male) is shown below:

Diasemopsis meigenii (Westwood, 1837)

Just because the subject of the post is one of the world's little bizarrities, it doesn't mean that you get away without any pre-amble.

I've mentioned elsewhere how the bulk of the diversity of life on earth is beetles... this is a slightly misleading statement. We have no idea how many species exist on earth, and until such time as life is extinct, or we can freeze time, the number changes as species diverge, and others become extinct (currently the trend is towards extinction, but that's another, much more depressing subject).

Because of this uncertainty, estimates of how many species exist worldwide are variable, and typically based on currently known species transformed by ongoing discovery rates. Of all the insects, the true flies (Diptera) are the closest rival of beetles (Coleoptera) for the title of most diverse group, but with description rates for species in both groups showing no signs of slowing down any time soon, it has occasionally been suggested that they may eventually overtake Coleoptera and take its title.

But that's probably a little radical.


So, straight into the taxonomy.

As a true fly, today's guest star is of course a member of
Eukaryota
  Animalia
    Eumetazoa
      Bilateralia
        Nephrozoa
          Protostomia
            Ecdysozoa
              Arthropoda
                Hexapoda
                  Insecta
                    Dicondylia
                      Pterygota
                        Manopterygota
                          Neoptera
                            Eumetabola
                              Endopterygota
                                Panorpida
                                  Antliophora
                                and Diptera, the afore-mentioned true flies. 

From here, we jump into 
                                         Brachycera
                                           Muscomorpha
                                             Schizophora
                                               Acalyptratae
                                                 Diopsoidea
                                                   Diopsidae, the stalk-eyed flies...
                                                     Diopsinae

Diasemopsis meigenii

(Westwood, 1837)

and, just to prove that sci-fi films haven't come up with anything that holds a candle to what the earth comes up with, here it is:

As much as it looks like a monster from Pitch Black, it's actually quite an innocuous little thing, this one seen rushing around on water plants, half-heartedly pursuing other members of its species... 

It's widespread in sub-Saharan Africa, and, I'm told, into parts of the Arabian Peninsula. 

Oh, and another angle... 

Identified by users on Diptera.info.

  

Anthia (Termophilum) fornasinii, Bertoloni 1845

So....

It's been about a... while. That's largely because other stuff (henceforth referred to as 'shizzlage') has been a-happening... and is continuing to happen, but I'm taking a break. 

Instead of going away from the computer and giving my eyes a chance to recover, I'm giving you a wonderful gift. Some hints: 

Eukaryota
  Animalia
    Eumetazoa
      Bilateralia
        Nephrozoa
          Protostomia
            Ecdysozoa
              Arthropoda
                Hexapoda
                  Insecta
                    Dicondylia
                      Pterygota
                        Manopterygota
                          Neoptera
                            Eumetabola
                              Endopterygota
                                Coleoptera

Yes, it's another beetle. We're a fraction closer to having representative samples of taxa (a tiny fraction. I'd need about twelve more up, eight or so of them weevils, before we could actually say that beetles were appropriately represented... and then, because we've already got three vertebrates up (here, here and here) I'd have to add two ray-finned fishes so that the Sarcopterygians don't steal an unfair share the show). Talking of the show, on with it: 

                                  Adephaga
                                    Carabidae (although realistically, a superfamily might be required here, these are probably the best-studied group of beetles that aren't agricultural pests)
                                      Harpalinae 
                                        Anthiitae 
                                          Anthiini

which brings us back to the more-or-less delightful:

Anthia (Termophilum) fornasinii

Bertoloni 1845

 (probably)

And - with precisely this much ado - here it is: 

These really-quite-large beetles don't have much in the way of a common name, beyond 'Ground Beetle' or, a little more descriptively 'Predatory Ground Beetle. You point out that this heavy-bodied beetle is liable to be a fairly poor predator? 

Well... 

To give you some idea of the scale of this (Central/East African) species, that beetle held in its jaws is a reasonable sized chafer (Melolonthinae), around 18mm long - just a little smaller than a Common Cockchafer (Melolontha melolontha). 

As an interesting final point, several members of the genus Anthia are armed with Formic acid (ants are fond of this defensive chemical), with which they will spray attackers. I have to add that while I have handled these beetles on several occasions, I've never witnessed such an attack.

Identification based on comparison to images on Carabidae of the World, http://carabidae.org/carabidae/taxa/fornasinii.html 

Cyathosternum prehensile (Bolívar, 1882)

I have to start by deploring the paucity of information freely available on African invertebrates - which itself leads on to a resolution to conclude with links to sites which were used, or might be used, to aid in identification in this area.

Now that we've covered that, let's get on with the phylogeny.

Eukaryota
  Animalia
    Eumetazoa
      Bilateralia
        Nephrozoa
          Prokaryota
            Ecdysozoa
              Arthropoda
                Hexapoda
                  Insecta
                    Dicondylia
                      Pterygota
                        Manopterygota
                          Neoptera
                            Polyneoptera
                              Anartioptera
                                Polyorthoptera
                                  Orthopterida
                                    Panorthoptera
                                      Orthoptera
                                        Caelifera
                                          Acrididea
                                            Acridoidea
                                              Acrididae
                                                Eyprocneminae
                                                

Cyathosternum prehensile 

Bolívar,1882

          

You may have noticed my lack of input on the taxonomy. That can be taken as an indication that I want to keep you guessing on what we have here. As the 'Insecta' makes it pretty obvious, it shouldn't take long...

No idea? 

It's a grasshopper or locust (the order, Orthoptera, also includes crickets, and the suborder Caelifera also includes the pygmy mole crickets - at the infraorder Acrididea it could still have been a grouse locust. Only at the superfamily Acridoidea did it become definitely a grasshopper of some description). With no common name to dawdle on, let's meet our guest for the post:

 A grassland species which flares a rich red wing as it flies, it is easily overlooked among other red-winged locusts and grasshoppers in the Central-African scrub-grassland it calls home. Its purplish-black eyeliner and (shown better in the picture below) hind feet, seem to distinguish it from the variety of similar species with which it shares its range. 

(Identity based on comparison of ranges and specimens pictured on the Orthoptera Species File, here)