Favoritos de hobartwqh

Honestly, this is a weird stick insect for me - it's quite different from anything in Australia, although maybe that's not obvious to someone who doesn't know much about them. Anyway, more to the point - what is it? Well, I'm happy with Aschiphasmatidae as a starting point, and it certainly appears to be an adult female.

Given that, let's take it through the key. We can easily rule out Dajaca, Dinophasma, Aschiphasma, Orthomeria, Parorthomeria, Yongtsuius, and Presbistus (winged, profemur incurved at base, tegmina not filiform, without arrowhead-shaped swelling on abdomen). That leaves us with five genera to check - Abrosoma, Anoplobistus, Chlorobistus, Eurybistus, and Kerabistus. The tegmina appear to be tiny or maybe absent, but if they are present they must be almost entirely green so that is helpful.

We can easily rule out Abrosoma because the single Bornean species is apterous in both sexes. Although Anoplobistus is only known from the male, it is quite different to this - mid to dark brown with bands on the legs and spots on the wings - so I am happy to discount it. Let's look at the key for Kerabistus. We can rule out K. hollowayi, K. marginatus, K. klantei, K. macrocephalum, K. sjostedti, K. affinis, K. nigrogeniculatus, K. dulichia, and K. telamon (legs green, head not swollen, wings exceeding 6th abdominal tergite, costal region of wings mainly green). That just leaves us with K. vantoli, which there is not a great deal of information about in my book (Seow-Choen, 2016), but luckily I do have the other book! I'll come back to that species later though - for now let's look at Eurybistus. In fact the first character of the key rules out everything except E. thetis, as the costal margin of the hind wing is green. Again I will continue on and go back to see what Bragg has to say about this species.

What about our final genus, Chlorobistus? Once more, we look to the key. We can rule out C. eryx, C. macroelytron, C. hamatus, C. fulvipennis, and C. redtenbacheri (tegmina without black, wings well exceeding sixth tergite). That just leaves us with C. iridescens to look at.

So, we have three different possible species in three different genera - Chlorobistus iridescens, Eurybistus thetis, and Kerabistus vantoli. We can easily rule out the latter as it has a thin black stripe on the head and pronotum, and the wings have some large blotches. That is the only easy species though, alas! The remaining two species seem to be very similar, and their descriptions are very much alike. I think key here is size and robustness. C. iridescens is a smaller, slightly more gracile species (female 44mm) and E. thetis is a larger, slightly chunkier species (female 60mm). It's hard to judge robustness, but it's not hard to judge size. Scaling up from the size of my hand, she's about 45mm, which strongly suggests C. iridescens. Is there anything else that helps us confirm this? Yes, there is, sort of. According to the description, E. thetis has the abdominal segments 6 and 7 swollen, although the diagram does not show them as being particularly swollen if you ask me. It's certainly a little more than my one has though, whereas the description of C. iridescens states "Segments 6-7 slightly wider than rest but not swollen" which certainly matches this.

So, I am happy with Chlorobistus iridescens for now! It seems like this entire family is quite poorly-understood, and I don't doubt there are likely undescribed species out there still. Could this be one of them? Maybe - it's definitely a possibility. But it is a good match for C. iridescens and I don't see why it shouldn't be called that in the absence of evidence to show otherwise. Once more, we need more work!

Interspecies grooming between Long-tailed Macaque and Dusky Leaf Monkey. Also seen foraging together and one particular macaque showing special interest in Dusky's butt, sniffing, checking, having closer look.