Water bug of some sort
April 12, 2010
Hi WTB,
On my hiking trip to Eastern Samaria (north-east of Jerusalem, Israel) on April 9-10, 2010 I came across this hemipteran. There were lots of them skating on the water of a spring, but they don’t look like water striders and I wasn’t able to find out what they are. Any ideas?
Ben
Eastern Samaria, Israel
Hi again Ben,
BugGuide lists two families in the Infraorder Gerromorpha that includes the Water Striders that look like good possibilities. Based on the photos on BugGuide, our first guess would be a Broad Shouldered Water Strider in the family Veliidae. Other names for these insects are Riffle Bugs and Ripple Bugs, and they are described as having a “pronotum broader than abdomen (as reflected in the common name); hind femur not longer than abdomen; pre-apical tarsal claws; usually wingless and dark-colored, sometimes with silvery markings.” The other possibility is the family Mesoveliidae, the Water Treaders, which BugGuide describes as being “Found on aquatic vegetation or running on the surface of the water. Fairly common around ponds.”
The family Veliidae includes a group of bugs sometimes referred to as Water Crickets, many included in the genus Velia. This one looks virtually identical to V. caprai (http://www.commanster.eu/commanster/Insects/Bugs/Veliidae.html), which is common from northern Europe to the Mediterranean (perhaps including Israel). That’s probably the correct genus but there are actually a number of species that look very similar and I don’t know which (if any) occur in Israel. There are lots of images on the web; the link below shows four possible candidates in the genus Velia. K
http://www2.pms-lj.si/heteroptera/velaff.htm