Laphria saffrana Fabricius:
Redescription


HEAD
    face hairs on upper face medium-length, procumbent, and yellow; these hairs overlap the top lateral portions of the gibbosity, as well as lie in a thick sheaf to each its sides; hairs arising from gibbosity restricted to its lower two-thirds, slightly procumbent, and yellow above level of center of oral cavity, hairs on lower portion of gibbosity black; area framed on each side of the oral margin by the gibbosity dorsally, and the inner margin of the eye dorsolaterally, is bare

    beard entirely yellow

    hairs underneath the proboscis yellow

    palpal hairs entirely yellow on first segment; on second segment some are black and some are yellow

THORAX
    postpronotal lobes with long yellow hairs, on anterior portion of scleite these hairs are erect and sparse, letting the ground color of orange show through, whereas as one moves posteriorly the hairs become set more and more densely and become inclined more and more posteriorly, until they obscure the ground color and merge with the recumbent hairs of the anterior mesonotum

    mesonotum ground color deep blue black; this color obscured anteriolaterally, laterally, and posteriorly by medium-length, thickly set, recumbent yellow hairs; small patches of the yellow hairs are also found to each side of the midline on the transverse suture; rest of disk with shorter, sparser, black hairs, which do not obscure the ground color; these black and yellow areas sharply demarcated from each other, forming a pattern somewhat resembling a black jack-o-lantern with a short, thick stem, set on a background of yellow; in some specimens the central patches of yellow extend both anteriorly and posteriorly in thin lines, making the mesonotum appear yellow with a central stripe and two lateral patches of black; hairs on posterior calli similar to those on margins of mesonotum; that is, compared to the rest of the genus, substantially reduced in length and extent

    tuft of hairs in front of wings entirely yellow

    tuft of hairs in front of haltere entirely yellow

    scutellar hairs on disk, black in male, yellow in female; in both cases so short and sparse as to let the black background color show through, making the scutellum look black from a distance; hairs on margin extremely short (so much so that at first sight they appear to be absent), black in both sexes

    ground color of legs orange

    fore- and mid-tibiae with typical brush of long hair on posterior surface of fore -tibiae, and on anterior, dorsal, and posterior surface of mid-tibiae, these latter hairs are slightly more prominent in the female than in the male; all hairs on both legs yellow

    hind tibiae entirely yellow haired; hairs corresponding to anterior tibial "brushes' are present, but are not differentiated in length from the other tibial hairs

    hind femora dorsal surface without differentiated band of long hairs; hairs at "knee" or apex not differentiated by either length or density; posterioventral margin with irregular double row of very stout, short, spine-like bristles stretching along its entire length; anterioventral margin with pair of similar bristles at about three fourths distance to apex, and a few weaker bristles beyond these; all hairs and bristles on both tibiae and on rest of leg yellow

ABDOMEN
    abdominal segments yellow haired in both male and female, except for small, dorsolateral patches of darker hair anteriorly on tergites 3-5; in male these patches consist of black hair anteriorly, fringed with orange hair posteriorly; in the female, entirely of orange hair, the relatively sparser distribution of which allows the darker cuticle to show through


Back to synopsis of Laphria saffrana