Fast Chameleon - _TNY_1886S2
This little guy was climbing on the white bricks of our house when I found him - that's mortar in the background.
I recognise this as a ground beetle and figured that such a striking colour scheme with the red legs and antennae should be easy to identify.
Yeah, that's a big nope on that one for me. I came as far as Possibly something in the Harpalus genus, but not further so I asked aroun in a Swedish beetle group on Facebook and got an an answer from one of the most knowledgable in the country.
It turns out this actually is a Harpalus - a male Harpalus affinis to be specific. In Håkan's trained eyes, the clues were the metllic sheen on the elytra coupled with a very fine pitting in between the grooves and the way the elytra is slightly shorter than the actual abdomen. Next level knowledge for sure.
There is no common English name for this one but the Swedish one, "kameleontfrölöpare" literally means "chameleon seed runner". The chameleon part comes from the metallic sheen sometimes being much more green and sometimes more red instead. And since only males have the metallic sheen while the females have a dull black colour, we can sex it easily as well.
This is a two exposure focus stack, but not compiled using Zerene Stacker. There was too much movement between the shots (legs, antennae and more) so I did it manually using just Photoshop which meant I got both the head and that special end of the elytra/abdomen in focus.
Fast Chameleon - _TNY_1886S2
This little guy was climbing on the white bricks of our house when I found him - that's mortar in the background.
I recognise this as a ground beetle and figured that such a striking colour scheme with the red legs and antennae should be easy to identify.
Yeah, that's a big nope on that one for me. I came as far as Possibly something in the Harpalus genus, but not further so I asked aroun in a Swedish beetle group on Facebook and got an an answer from one of the most knowledgable in the country.
It turns out this actually is a Harpalus - a male Harpalus affinis to be specific. In Håkan's trained eyes, the clues were the metllic sheen on the elytra coupled with a very fine pitting in between the grooves and the way the elytra is slightly shorter than the actual abdomen. Next level knowledge for sure.
There is no common English name for this one but the Swedish one, "kameleontfrölöpare" literally means "chameleon seed runner". The chameleon part comes from the metallic sheen sometimes being much more green and sometimes more red instead. And since only males have the metallic sheen while the females have a dull black colour, we can sex it easily as well.
This is a two exposure focus stack, but not compiled using Zerene Stacker. There was too much movement between the shots (legs, antennae and more) so I did it manually using just Photoshop which meant I got both the head and that special end of the elytra/abdomen in focus.