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Prime Suspect - _TNY_2551

Sometimes identifying animals is difficult, but sometimes you catch a break and it becomes much easier.

 

Here is one of many greyish, almost chalky larvae which I found on some flowers at my mother's summer house.

 

Sounds like a difficult ID, but first we can see notice the distinct head shape with small round eyes on the side which tells us it is a larvae of a sawfly.

 

Then we consider the host plant which in this case is the yellow loosestrife (Lysimachia punctata) and the location (Sweden) which narrows it down to just one species - the loosestrife sawfly (Monostegia abdominalis).

 

There is actually a very similar species (though not found in Sweden yet) which could have fit the bill, M. nigra - but that one lacks the black spot on the head which this one has.

 

For the edit if this one, I'm trying out Topaz AI Sharpening after processing it in Photoshop and so far I am very pleased with the results although I wished that Topaz didn't strip the EXIF metadata from the image so I had to restore it in Photoshop afterwards.

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Uploaded on March 2, 2020
Taken on August 17, 2017