SUBFAMILY II. — ASOPINiE. 197 



fourth and fifth shorter, subequal. Pronotum with front portion gradu- 

 ally declivent, its side margins broadly but evidently concave, their front 

 portion distinctly crenate; humeri usually acutely spinose, rarely only 

 acute-angled; disk of both pronotum and scutellum with numerous nar- 

 row wavy smooth lines between the irregular rows of punctures. Elytra 

 minutely alutaceous, finely sparsely irregularly punctate. Abdomen 

 with sides finely, sparsely rugosely punctate, the middle almost smooth; 

 ventral spine reaching middle of hind coxae, its apex rounded. Length, 

 11—13.5 mm.; width, 6—8 mm. (Fig. 38). 



Common throughout Indiana, January — November ; most 

 frequent, June to August, on tall weeds in alluvial soil along 

 streams and in dense woodland. Hibernates as imago beneath 

 mullein and piles of dead leaves. A specimen was taken June 

 27 feeding on a larva of the milkweed butterfly and another, 

 Nov. 4, feeding also on a lepidopterous larva. Dunedin. 

 Sarasota and Istokpoga, Fla., Dec. 15 — March 29. Frequent 

 about Dunedin in February and March on foliage of shrubs 

 along the margins of hammocks. These Florida specimens have 

 the membrane of elytra immaculate or rarely with a faint trace 

 of the fuscous blotch found in the northern ones. The presence 

 or absence of this blotch has been used as one of the principal 

 differential characters in the keys of Van Duzee, Kirkland, and 

 others, but it is evidently an unreliable one. 



This well known bug, up to 1899, was known in literature as 

 Podisus spinosus Dallas (1851, 98) , but Mr. S. H. Scudder in that 

 year found in the library of the Boston Society of Natural 

 History a copy of an unknown paper of Thomas Say, :;s not con- 

 tained in the "Complete Writings" of that author, in which this 

 species was described from Louisiana as Pentatoma maculiventris, 

 this specific name, therefore, antedating that of Dallas by 

 twenty years. 



The known range of P. maculiventris is a wide one, extending 

 from Quebec and New England to the Pacific and south and 

 southwest to Florida and Arizona. It appears to be scarce in 

 Florida, as, aside from the stations above named, it has been 

 taken only at St. Petersburg and Sanford (Van Ditzcc, 1909, 

 158). Morrill (1906, 160) records the keeping of a pair of 

 these bugs in captivity for 55 days, during which time they 

 destroyed and ate 246 larvae of the elm leaf beetle and seven 

 large caterpillars. The female began laying eggs nine days 



'""Descriptions of New Species of Xorth American Insects, found in Louisiana by 

 Joseph Barbarino." New Harmony, Ind.. March, 1831. See Psyche. VIII. 1899, 306. 



