abstinence_enthusiast's Journal

I keep getting asked how I distinguish the two species, so I'm gonna post it here and then link this where needed.

Here's how to tell who's who:

The first thing that sticks out with inornata is an iridescence of the corium. I've described this of having the faint magenta sheen of an oil slick. On femorata, this doesn't occur, as the corium always appears dusty due to the plentiful white setae they have. All Narnia are hairy, but femorata is the hairiest, which makes them look pale next to inornata, which appears smoother and darker.

The second thing to then look for is a band across the corium. If there's a clear band, not just a change in color, it's not inornata. Both inornata and femorata can vary a bit with how this mid area is colored, but there is no banding across inornata. Inornata sometimes has faint "upside-down triangles" below where a band would occur, but that's it. Femorata will either have the wonky band, or the triangles, but they're obviously lighter and more defined against than the surrounding area.

Lastly, inornata is slimmer. Look at the connexivum of inornata and take note of how it's always pretty uniform in how wide it gets. In femorata, this varies a lot, but most I'd say are wider.

Here's a key that uses different traits than I do, such as tibia dialation (which I'm eh about), but it's still something:
https://onedrive.live.com/?authkey=%21APQwOfOP6BPuhdA&cid=572E835A53FA275E&id=572E835A53FA275E%2170987&parId=572E835A53FA275E%2170950&o=OneUp

This site and Bugguide both have a ton of wrongly ID-ed femorata and inornata, so it's really confusing to look through them right now. I'm pretty sure they hybridize with whoever is nearby, so half of all indiviuals are frustratingly ambiguous. I'll fix what I can, but until I can say they're mostly correct, here's solid examples of inornata and femorata to reference:

inornata:
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/140187264
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/178292801
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/1641296
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/170926797
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/151556210
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/190932859

femorata:
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/108335914
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/98519624
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/44064005
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/31210947
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/93724652
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/110613036
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/36028271

It's getting a bit tiring to go through everything. I don't like to be the kind of person who just says "Yep, this is Narnia" without going further, so I normally just ID to species or leave things untouched if I can't fully decide. I'm reviewing all my IDs so far for femorata, because I now know that some are too iffy to go one way or another, and I'm revoking what I'm not certain of.

In the end, I'm glad to have determined the true range of inornata (seems it's the predominant species along the border), but further than that, I don't think theres much more to do. I still have some stuff with wilsoni that I care about, but as for the three other species, I have no more questions. Season is over anyways. Where to next? Probably Mozena, specifically in Arizona. I'll keep with my coreids until further notice...

Shoutout to @ameeds, @ncb1221, and anyone whose pics I linked. And omega shoutout to @natcase for listening to me talk about Narnia week after week and day after day, and for giving me the two wilsoni~ You're too cool~