Tachyporus dispar

This was the first Tachyporus that I identified after getting Duff's volume. I had previously struggled to resolve all of my Tachyporus using Hackston's key, in part as I had struggled to make sense of the differences in elytral setae. So when I started looking through Duff and found that elytral setae arrangement played a more important part in his key than they did in Hackston, my heart sank a bit! I decided to use Hackston first and in many ways found his key, where nice easy characters like the colour of the head and pronotum take more precedence, much easier to use. But I did experience the same problem I'd previously had with Hackston's Tachyporus keys, in the description of the microsculpture. At high magnification I think I can see a vague microsculpture on the elytra but it is far from clear. In this case the other characters in the couplet where this was mentioned were clear enough to proceed.

I then keyed it using Duff. In the end I could see the setae arrangement clearly enough - I struggled to see what he meant by rows of setae but comparing with the diagrams left me in little doubt about which way to go. Once finished I removed the elytra and examined them with light transmitted from below - this made it much easier to see the setae and compare with the diagrams, and it also made the pattern of the elytra more obvious. In the end I arrived at the same conclusion using both keys.

female Tachyporus dispar showing hind tarsus, maxillary palps, sutural setae, lateral setae (from below), apical setae, abdominal tergites and elytra, North Elmham (Norfolk, UK), 7th September 2024