There’s one more bug I’ve spotted while out surveying all the Common fleabane flowers in my local vicinity that I want to talk about here. I didn’t include it in the more general bugs blog, On Common Fleabane: bugs and crickets, as I was hoping to get confirmation of its exact identity. It seems now that’s unlikely to happen and I will shortly explain why. But first, let me introduce Stictopleurus, of which I found both an adult (first photo) and a nymph (second photo).

There are only two Stictopleurus species in Britain, S. punctatonervosus and S. abutilon, but, like so many creatures, the two are not easy to distinguish one from the other. The British Bugs website explains:

The two species are very similar and best separated with reference to the fine detail of the pronotum. In S. abutilon, the dark marks behind the anterior margin take the form of two full circles (half circles in S. punctatonervosus). There is also a narrow impunctate band in front of these markings. Note that these characters are not always easy to discern [my emphasis].

That sounds relatively easy, right? The website pages for the two species even have sketches of those magic circles. But that last sentence is crucial: ‘these characters are not always easy to discern’. I fiddled with my clearest photo in Photoshop to try to see those full or half circles more clearly, and I think I see half circles (so Stictopleurus punctatonervosus). What do you think?