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What are my chances of this being a female Machimus cowini? It was photographed on 29 July 2013 on a wooded track by a river, central lowland France. It was about 15mm in length.

I was doing a butterfly transect at the time and it clearly thought my recording sheet was an excellent place to look out for prey. Whenever I moved and put it in the shade it hopped across to the other side of the sheet. Quite chummy and amusing.

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It is a female and hard , or even impossible to give a positive id. It is not Tolmerus (Machimus) cowini because there is too much red on the femora. I would propose T. cf atricapillus.

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Thanks Reinoud. I discounted <i>atricapillus</i> itself because I can see some white hairs on the face. I was really tossing up between <i>cowini</i> and <i>cingulatus</i>. I entirely accept that it is more or less impossible to ID this genus from photos though, unless you have multiple angles and high definition.

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Tolmerus (Machimus) atricapillus has also white hair in the beard in lower third and also the lower occipital bristles are white. For T. cowini there is too much red in thighes and for T. cingulatus too little. Also the rings on the tibia are distinct enough. T. micans could be another option. In short, we can't be sure.