Subject: White winged with pincers in CR
Location: Costa Rica
June 2, 2014 8:27 pm
Found this guy in the Arenal rainforest area of Costa Rica on the side of a stucco building at about 8 am. It was approximately 3 inches total length. It would not move, even when I blew on it.
Signature: Vmead
Dobsonfly: Chloronia species
Dear Vmead,
We believe we have identified your Dobsonfly as a Chloronia species thanks to an image on The Smaller Majority by Piotr Naskrecki. You may also see a member of the genus on PBase, though both of the images we are linking to are considerably more yellow than your individual.
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Location: Costa Rica
Is it a “guy”? I thought the boys had long jaws…
Thanks for bringing that to our attention Curious Girl. We generally correct inaccuracies in content in an inquiry. We are not able to locate any images of Dobsonflies in the genus Chloronia with scimitar-like mandibles online, so, there are either no images of males online, or in this genus, there is not as much sexual dimorphism.
Is it possible this is the male to the female?
https://www.whatsthatbug.com/2014/06/11/dobsonfly-costa-rica-2/
That would be hard to determine since these images were shot with flash photography, but the male in the link does not appear to have the same yellow coloration.
The male? Or the female? Because you said above that the female lacks the yellow of most Chloronia species shown online. I just thought that the wing patterns/black marks seemed the same and they are both from Costa Rica about the same time of year…
I like your site, and this entry is in my backyard. We have been in CR for a year now and everyday brings a bug or animal we haven’t seen.
We get some images of some pretty amazing critters from Costa Rica.