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Balta bicolor
A beautiful cockroach.
20mm. mostly golden brown with some darker parts on wing cases, a simple white band at the back of a very clear, glass-like, shell which extends beyond the head. Same glass shell over wing cases.
On local casurina. Area is open dry sclerophyll eucalyptus forest.
Apologies for photo quality.
http://bie.ala.org.au/species/urn:lsid:b...
4 Comments
Wow thanks. Sureish I could afford all these books. :)
Just to give you some supporting info. for my opinion: if your have Rentz's (2014) book, the species he illustrates as Ellipsidion bicolor has all black legs, unlike your specimen. Under the name Balta bicolor, Rentz illustrates the same species as under Balta spuria, and these are not Balta bicolor, which isn't illustrated at all in Rentz's book! Ellipsidion species are robust and convex with fully opaque pronotum. Balta are small, slender and flattened, with transparent pronotal margins. Most Balta are nocturnal, but B. bicolor is diurnal, like the Ellipsidion species.
Thanks Stephen.
This is Balta bicolor Hebard, 1943 [not Ellipsidion bicolor (Tepper)]