The Current State of Hobby Platymeris Taxonomy

So, over the past few years a number of changes have been made to the way we label the various Platymeris spp. in captive culture, and with a recent revelation made on hobby stock "guttatipennis", I figure now is as good a time as any to cover the various Platymeris strains in culture, and provide the proper, updated IDs for them all, to prevent people from getting confused and mixing up stocks (which is important considering recent evidence shows that the different species can indeed hybridize in captivity).

Platymeris biguttatus (White Spot Assassin Bug)

This species is the only hobby Platymeris with white wing spots. The wild type has yellow leg bands, but there is an isolated color morph in captivity referred to as "Ghost" which has white leg bands. Pretty easily distinguished from other hobby Platymeris by the coloration, and as far as I know the ID has never been contested.

Wild type ©Roachcrosssing

"Ghost" morph

Platymeris guttatipennis "Somaliland"

This is probably the least commonly cultured Platymeris, adults have yellow wing spots and yellow leg banding. No other color variations are known at this time, at least not in the hobby stock. I am only aware of this one locality in culture.

©Karel Kodejš

Platymeris laevicollis (Red Spot Assassin Bug)

This species was originally misidentified as P.rhadamanthus when it entered culture, though it's become clear in recent years that they are actually P.laevicollis. Adults have red wing spots that are relatively small compared to the spots of other Platymeris, and red leg banding. No other color forms are known.

©James Finsel

©James Finsel

Platymeris rhadamanthus "Mombo, Tanzania" (Mombo Assassin Bug)

This strain went unidentified past genus for years, until the redescription of P.rhadamanthus which led not only to the Red Spots getting reidentified as P.laevicollis, but also provided enough evidence to label this stock as true P.rhadamanthus.

Most colonies of this locality in the pet trade consistently throw out adults with orange wing spots, though apparently the founding stock all had yellow wing spots, and the resulting offspring were much more variable, with adults throwing out red, orange and yellow wing spots, and both red and orange banded legs.

Here's a quote from the original collector of this strain, Djari Sabutaro: "In 2000, I collected six of them in the countryside near Mombo, in Tanzania. They were living under the overhanging bark of a large tree growing between agricultural fields.  From these six came this entire culture. They were all coloured with yellow spots on their wings and red legs. All the other colours appeared during the course of the culture".

Reddish Spotted, Red Leg form ©Djari Sabutaro

Orange Spotted, Orange Leg form ©Djari Sabutaro

Yellow Spotted, Red Leg form ©Djari Sabutaro

Platymeris cf. rhadamanthus "Burundi"/"Kenya"

These two strains were initially identified as "Platymeris cf. guttatipennis", on account of having yellow wing spots. However, as mentioned previously, true guttatipennis have yellow leg bands, whereas these two strains have red leg bands. Adults of these two strains also have spines on the humeral angles of the pronotum, which true guttatipennis lack.

Additionally, we now know that true rhadamanthus can also have yellow wing spots, and that species is a much closer match for these two strains. They're smaller than the "Mombo" locality, but the marginal size difference is not enough to suggest these are a different species.

Sadly, the "Burundi" line has apparently died out of culture.

"Kenya" locality

"Burundi" locality ©Jörn Strahl

Hopefully I did a good job of explaining the proper identities of these different hobby stocks, and hopefully y'all found this informative. 😄 Big thanks to everyone who let me use their photos for this post!

Thanks for reading, hope everyone enjoyed, and I'll see you all next time! 😉