See this thread that I started detailing my harrowing experience with a strange insect.
Well, I found it. Looks like it crawled out from under the couch in its last moments. I Felt kind of sorry for it despite its grossness. I made scans of it. On closer inspection it is unlike the stonefly picture that I linked to in the first thread. It is much shorter. It has also shrivelled up a good deal now. The wings are quite dark so it looks like a beetle when not flying, but if you look at its underside you can see it has a tapered waist. It also seems to have some kind of mouthparts for sucking nectar or what have you.
No, it’s definitely not a beetle. It looks like it has a shell because of the width of the thorax and darkness and shape of the wings. But it has no shell and didn’t when it was alive either. If you look closely at the scan of it upside-down, it has a wasplike body.
Colibri , the body itself looks similar to the Black Corsair. But on mine the wings are a dark grey colour, almost black, which lends to the appearance of a shell. Mine doesn’t have the red markings that the Corsair looks to have.
There are two species, The one in the photo I think is actually Melanolestes abdominalis, which differs from M. picipes in having red on the wings, whereas the latter is entirely blackish. However, the website I found the photo on indicates the two forms are probably the same species.
Ok, I’ve managed to separate the wings and uploaded the pic to my link. It has 2 dark wings overlapping 2 transparent wings underneath. The abdomen is quite flat now but in life it was plumper and rounder.
Yes, this indicates the typical wing structure of the Hemiptera, which means “half wing.” Note that the front part of the forewings is thick and stiffened, while the rear part is more membranous. In contrast, in other groups where the forewings are thickened, they are more uniform, as in the Orthoptera (grasshoppers, etc, where they are leathery) or Coleoptera (beetles, where they are hard). Hemiptera also are characterized by sucking mouthparts.
I started to read this thread and the links, and my first thought was “I hope that bug doesn’t live near me”, but then I noticed you live in Ontario! :eek:
