Amphizoa insolens - trout stream beetle
California
Amphizoa are among the more enigmatic insects I’ve photographed. These dime-sized beetles are found only in the mountains of China and western North America, a disjunct distribution paralleled by a number of interesting taxa, including the giant redwoods. All six species are predaceous and aquatic, living in debris and [...]
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Distremocephalus - Phengodidae
Arizona
The beetle family Phengodidae is odd any way you look at it. The adult female (not pictured) is larviform, which means she never loses her grub-like appearance as she grows into sexual maturity. She has no wings and no long antennae. But she does bioluminesce, and that gives the family their [...]
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Eusattus dilatatus - dune darkling beetle (Tenebrionidae)
California, USA
Sand dunes are an unusual habitat, and the creatures found on them are equally odd. One of the more charismatic dune endemics is Eusattus dilatatus, a large darkling beetle found in southern California. This scavenging insect has long legs for digging and a waxy cuticle to [...]
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Araeoschizus sp. Ant Beetle (Tenebrionidae)
California
Araeoschizus is a small genus of darkling beetle that both resembles ants and lives close to ant nests. It occurs in the arid western regions of North America. Not much is known about the nature of the association of these beetles with the ants, but they may subsist on the refuse [...]
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Temnoscheila Bark-Gnawing Beetle, Arizona
Trogossitidae
This colorful insect arrived to a blacklight in my backyard a couple of years back, right when I first moved to Tucson. Previously I’d encountered Temnoscheila only under the bark of dead trees, where they apparently prey on the larvae of other beetles. I’ve always wondered why a beetle that [...]
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Epicauta pardalis - spotted blister beetle
Tucson, Arizona
Here’s a beetle so toxic it can kill a horse. The horse doesn’t even need to ingest the beetle, it just needs to ingest something that the beetle bled on. Blister beetles produce the defensive compound cantharadin- the active ingredient of the aphrodesiac Spanish Fly- which they [...]
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via Google Trends. Blue is ants, red is beetles:
Ants win, even in the face of the beetles’ 20-fold species advantage.
That seasonal pattern is striking, no?
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Tribolium castaneum - Red Flour Beetle
The genome of the red flour beetle Tribolium castaneum was published today in Nature. This latest insect genome is interesting not for what it says about beetles but for what it says about another model species, the venerable fruit fly. The more we learn about other insect genomes- [...]
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Chauliognathus lecontei - LeConte’s Soldier Beetle
Chiricahua Mountains, Arizona
Soldier Beetles are named for their bright colors. Larvae are predaceous, but adults are commonly seen feeding from the nectar and pollen of flowers.
photo details: Canon 100m f2.8 macro lens on a Canon 20D
f/6.3, 1/250 sec, ISO 200
indirect strobe in white box
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Hololepta Clown Beetle (Histeridae)
Arizona
If Oscars were awarded for Most Aesthetically Pleasing Sculpturing on an Insect, hister beetles would make the short list. Especially Hololepta, which not only shows the trademark histerid shininess but also has a flattened, paper-thin body. Michele Lanan, who collected this beetle for me, noted that it seems designed [...]
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