South African Spiny Bug

On May 27, 2019 · Category: True Bugs · 3 Comments

Subject: What insect is this?
Geographic location of the bug: South Africa, Freestate, Bloemfontein
Date: 05/25/2019
Time: 12:54 PM EDT
Your letter to the bugman: Was asked to find out what kind of bug this is and I cannot find any sources to identify it.
How you want your letter signed: Elden

Spiny Bug

Dear Elden,
We spent a good amount of time attempting to identify your fascinating looking insect, and we finally decided to post it as Unidentified, a tag with far too many postings than we would like. We feel very confident this is a True Bug in the suborder Heteroptera and we do not think it is a Lace Bug, but our searching produced nothing. We even tried calling it “puzzle-shaped” to no avail. We know we have a very similar looking True Bug in our archives, and we hope to have you a more definite identification soon. Perhaps one of our readers will recognize this interesting insect.

Update: Spiny True Bug
Thanks to a comment from Karl who assisted us in the past, we were able to locate the previous submission in our archives, the uncharacteristic looking Coreid Bug, possibly Pephricus livingstonei, commonly called a Spiny Bug.

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