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Family: Notonectidae
Another victim of artificial lighting (and metallic blue paint)? This tiny animal (about 5mm long) was built to swim upside down and just under the surface. No wonder those eyes look so full of water :-)
Found on the front of a metallic blue car at night under strong security lights.
Also called 'Backswimmers'. When you find them away from water does this mean their original home is drying out?
No open water resource within a kilometre although I believe there is a covered underground stream at this location. Weather has been incredibly dry for the past 2 months. Notonectidae or Corixidae seems as close as possible now.
2 images of THIS creature with 2 different ID's... http://www.flickr.com/photos/69610519@N0...
http://www.whatsthatbug.com/2010/09/22/w...
Anisops (genus) also in Australia but I'm curious about eye colour which seems always full-black in Anisops sp.
http://collections.museumvictoria.com.au...
http://www.mdfrc.org.au/bugguide/display...
Thanks Juan and Livan...
Spotted on Jan 29, 2014
Submitted on Jan 30, 2014
6 Comments
You're right - incredible similarity...
Oh well, bugguide states: Buenoa is "the only New World representative of the subfamily Anisopinae, that contains 3 more genera (in the Old World)" so the genus would be different then. It looks very similar though, so maybe search for species in your area that belong to that subfamily.
Changed to hemipteran - thanks heaps guys - now for the fun researching.
Great info Juan. So the underground water might be very relevant. Thanks - that should narrow my search.
In US they are called Backswimmers. They are bugs actually not beetles. This site only for North American species but look into Family Notonectidae, even maybe Genus Buenoa.
http://bugguide.net/node/view/4965/bgpag...
This is Water bug (Hemiptera). It could be Corixidae or Notonectidae. In any case, the pale color and big eyes probably mean is adapted to low light conditions