alienke 的最愛

@richyfourtytwo and @beetledude, I have made my plan. Apologies for the delay. All individuals shown here were from one colony found feeding on "pupating" larvae of the gregarious Megaleruca on a white stinkwood trunk.
The main larval differences that I could observe when comparing the larvae of Harmonia axyridis (H.a) and larvae of Harmonia vigintiduomaculata (H.v), are the following:
(Pls. ignore the possible grossly wrong or misguided terminology I am using, but I think you will know what I am referring to when looking at the photographs while reading my descriptions).

1. In H.v there are yellow markings on the lateral lobes of the first four abdominal segments, and in H.a on the first five. Note, in some H.a larvae I have noticed that the lobes of the fifth abdominal segment contains duller yellow markings which may complicate comparisons - it may look that there are no markings. Younger individuals may also display duller yellow and/or white markings or the markings may be completely missing. H.v may also have yellow markings on the ventro-lateral sides of abdominal segments one to four, I have not seen these yellow markings in H.a yet.
2. In H.a there are yellow (sometimes very light yellow or whitish) markings on the two dorsal lobes of the first, fourth and fifth abdominal segments. There are no such markings on the dorsal lobes of H.v (this may be the most obvious and usable difference between the two species).
3. In addition to the lateral abdominal and thoracic white markings, mature larvae of H.v also have clear white markings on the inside dorso-lateral prothorax and dorsal mesothorax. H.a may have faint and/or much smaller white markings on the dorsal metathorax, but markings on the dorsal or dorso-lateral pro-and mesothorax are mostly absent.
4. A problem may arise when there are dramatic variation between populations (I only photographed one population). Another problem may arise when we inspect and compare these two species with the larvae of other species, e.g. Harmonia quadripunctata - I do not think we have any verified images of larvae of the latter species, maybe they are similar to H.a and/or H.v.
5. The adults of H.v occur in two distinct different forms (relating to the markings on the elytra), but adult differences is not the objective of this post (I have included them both in this posting for reference anyway - all from the same population).
6. All iNat observations of H.v so far were from the eastern coastal areas, my observation was in Pretoria - am I missing something, another species?
7. Maybe some kind taxonomist want to completely rewrite my "larval descriptions" above - I will not object.