SUBFAMILY VIII. — APIOMERIN^E. 



565 



KEY TO EASTERN SPECIES OF APIOMERUS. 



a. Pronotum black, its margins narrowly edged with red, the hind one 

 often pale; ventrals usually wholly black; corium blackish-brown, 

 its base reddish; genital plate of male black; larger, 14 — 19 mm. 



538. CRASSIPES. 



act. Pronotum with disk in part red; ventrals each with a distinct pale 

 transverse median bar, their front and hind margins black; corium 

 in great part reddish-brown; genital plate of male dull red; small- 

 er, not over 13 mm. 539. spissipes. 



538 (764). Apiomerus crassipes (Fabricius), 1803, 273. 



Rather broadly oval. Black; narrow margins of pronotum, basal 

 half of costal margin of elytra and rather broad margin of connexivum, 



both above and beneath, red or reddish-yel- 

 low; coxa? dull red; hind margin of scutel- 

 lum and two or three short cross nervures 

 of corium usually dull yellow. Structural 

 characters as under subfamily and generic 

 headings. Length, 14 — 19 mm. (Fig. 140). 



Southern half of Indiana, frequent, 

 June 6 — July 11; swept from foliage 

 of hazel and other shrubs along path- 

 ways, usually on high wooded slopes. 

 One was taken with a soldier bug, 

 Podisus maculiventris (Say), impaled on 

 its beak and another with a green 

 Cerambycid beetle, Gaurotes cyanipennis 

 (Say). Dunedin, Fla., April 10; 

 beaten from juniper. The known 

 range of A. crassipes extends from 

 Canada and Connecticut west to Min- 

 nesota, Colorado and California, and 

 southwest to Florida, Texas and 

 Listed from twelve different stations in Florida. 

 1884,282) says that: 



Fig. 140, X 3. (After Lugger). 



Mexico. 

 Uhler ( 



"It lays its eggs on the twigs and bark of pine trees. These hatch 

 during early summer, and the young may then be seen roaming over the 

 trees in the search of plant lice and young caterpillars, which they pierce 

 and suck to death, often holding them out on the tip of the rostrum, 

 while keeping them from getting away by holding them down with the 

 fore feet. The adult insects may be found in the trees as early as 

 March, and numbers may be beaten therefrom during the summer and 

 autumn. This species inhabits most of the thinly distributed pine belts 

 from lower Canada to southern Florida, and varies much in the width of 

 the red markings of the thorax, wing covers and abdomen." 



