Lebai atriceps
Lebai atriceps
Size: 6.5-8mm
Seasonality: May-October
Distribution; MB-AB-OR-AZ-w.TX, Mexico
Information: nocturnal and/or diurnal. Often seen on brightly coloured flowers during the day, and at porch lights, UV lights, and mercury vapour traps at night. Tend to prey upon small insects such as aphids, leaf beetle larvae, and gnats. Dorsal colouration extremely variable.
Description: body: elongate-quadrate, semi-robust, flattened. Dorsal colouration: head glossy black; pronotal disk pale orange; elytra metallic dark blue. Head semi-triangular; eyes large, strongly bulging laterally--weakly slanted forward. Two supraorbital setae over each eye. Mandibles small, curved: mostly obscured by the labrum. Labrum small, margins opaque yellow. Surface of the head heavily wrinkled, in a semicircular pattern. Palpi dark with pale tips. Scapus, pedicel, and the first following antennomere pale yellow-orange, the rest of the antennae dark. Antennal pubescence begins on the second half of the second antennomere following the pedicel. Pronotum short, weakly stretched transversely, squarish; front margin flat; front angles rounded; lateral margins round; hind angles squared; basal margin sinuous. Lateral dorsal margins flattened, inner region of the pronotal disk convex; median line weak; disk riddled with small interconnecting wrinkles. Elytra oblong; humeral shoulders round; apices truncate-squared, leaving the tip of the abdomen exposed. 8 well-defined striae per elytron, outer striae interrupted just before the apex. 3rd stria with two small fovea, one near the apices, the other near the base of the elytron. Ventral colouration: sternites dark cobalt blue; metasternum pale orange; metepimeron to the mesepisternum pale orange. Femora orange, tibiae dark. Genae glossy black; gula orange; submentum partially dark orange; mentum dark orange.