Thanks to my friend Martin for pointing this out to me! 😁 It would appear that in yet another case of initial misidentification of a species entering culture, our hobby "Eucorydia forceps" are in fact, Eucorydia aenea.
The two are quite similar in appearance, though with some notable differences. After quick look and comparison between the two thanks to the 2017 Revision Paper for the genus, I figured I would share those differences in a post to help clear things up in the hobby.
Eucorydia aenea and E.forceps are both metallic green/blue Eucorydia, with tegmina covered in bands of silvery white hairs.
However, E.aenea has a wider recorded range than forceps, (the latter of which has only been recorded from Malaysia). Additionally, aenea have black legs and ventral abdominal segments, whereas those of forceps are metallic blue. E.aenea also have long, rectangular yellow spots on either side of their tegmina, while E.forceps have much smaller yellow dots on their tegmina.
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| Eucorydia aenea (from Figure 11 of the Revision Paper) |
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| Eucorydia forceps (from Figure 11 of the Revision Paper) |
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| Adult male of the hobby stock "forceps" |
Our hobby stock has long rectangular yellow spots on the tegmina, as you can see in my picture above. I just checked an adult male myself, and I can confirm this stock does have black legs, and a black underside. Additionally, the locality data of our hobby stock is "South Vietnam", and while E.aenea are recorded from Vietnam, E.forceps are not.
So clearly, the hobby stock appears to be E.aenea, rather than E.forceps. Hopefully we'll see true E.forceps in the hobby one day, but for now it's nice to have a more definitive ID on the strain in culture.
Hopefully this helped clear things up! Thanks for reading everyone, I'll see you next time! 😉
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