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Ladybug, Coccinellidae

Hegemona darking beetle.

Armenia, Belize

leptinotarsa decemlineata. My father's beetles. Actually, probably just 0.001% of them. He hordes them. Inordinant fondness, in fact!

The structure, texture, and color of a portion of the elytra from a metallic wood boring beetle. The two "shells" come together inside the parallel lines down the center of the image.

Guernsey commercial fisherman Clive Brown brought me a bundle of 15 mm diameter rope that he found at sea suspended from a float. He removed the float and brought me the wound up rope, which was encrusted with bryozoans and had mussels and scallops attached to it. I unwound the rope and found four of these scaleworms, family aphroditidae, living inside the rope windings.

Clive brought me the rope on February 4, 2008. I unravelled it and took photographs that afternoon of the species living inside the rope with a Canon A640 digital camera with an off-camera epoque flash using white reflectors over a black background.
File No. 040208 2865
©RLLord
fishinfo@guernsey.net

scaleworm from rope CB 040208 2869 smg

scaleworm from rope CB 040208 2867 smg

This beautiful scaleworm, Alentia gelatinosa, turned up in one of Clive Brown's crab pots in about 50 fathoms of water off the south coast of Guernsey. The same species is found also on the Guernsey shore under boulders and cobbles and in tide pools. It swims quickly in a slinky manner undulating its body from side to side. It is the largest scaleworm found on the Guernsey shore reaching a length of 6 to 7 cm. It is not abundant but it is seen regularly. The scales or elytra overlap and cover the dorsal surface of the body. They are easily shed if the animal is handled. The worm has a soft gelatinous appearance. It can be brown or grey.

It does not appear in the Collins Pocket Guide Sea Shore of Britain & Northern Europe by Peter Hayward, Tony Nelson-Smith and Chris Shields. I identified this species from a French sea shore guide.

Clive Brown gave this scaleworm for me to photograph on 16 April, 2003.
File No. 160403 12-657
©RLLord
fishinfo@guernsey.net

Ladybug, Coccinellidae

Ladybug, Coccinellidae

Ladybug, Coccinellidae

See photo in original gallery.

filename: Lady Beetle |

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