Archive for the ‘Coleoptera’ Category.
28th June 2008, 05:00 am
Sam found this one under her crib on May 27. It’s a rather striking gold-colored beetle with intricate tracery on the wing covers.
This is certainly one of the Calligrapha leaf beetles[1]. Based on the dark green pronotum (the plate between the head and the wing covers), it looks like it is related to Calligrapha alni, the Russet Alder Leaf Beetle. I’m not so sure it is that exact species, though. While the pattern on the wing covers is very close, the examples in Bug Guide show more of a rusty coloration, and a bit less gold.
Continue reading ‘Calligrapha Leaf Beetle’ »
14th June 2008, 05:00 am
This one smacked me in the back of the neck while I was working in the yard the weekend of May 24, and got tangled up in the hair on my upper back until I grabbed it and pulled it out.
I then noticed there were several others flying about, so they are obviously something really common. It looks exactly like a Red Turpentine Beetle, Dendroctonus valens. This is a pretty likely identification, because (a) they are well-known pests of pine trees, (b) there is a pine plantation just behind our house, and (c) they emerge as adult beetles very early in the spring.
Continue reading ‘Red Turpentine Beetle’ »
29th March 2008, 05:00 am
In February, I posted a picture of a larva of a carpet beetle. Well, now we have some pictures of an adult[1] that I found climbing up the side of the shower, to round out the set:
Continue reading ‘Carpet Beetle Adult’ »
2nd February 2008, 06:00 am
There are no uninteresting insects, only insects that are insufficiently magnified
S_ found this little larva while cleaning out a cupboard. It was in the back of the shelf, happily chowing down on a dead ant.
Continue reading ‘Carpet Beetle Larva’ »
29th December 2007, 06:00 am
When I found this beetle crawling across the floor in the basement, I knew what it was right away:
It’s a darkling beetle, Tenebrio molitor.
Continue reading ‘Darkling Beetle’ »
15th December 2007, 06:22 am
One of the feral apple trees about 100 yards behind the house has very “late” apples, that stay on the tree a loooong time. As in, as of now (mid-December, with a couple of feet of snow on the ground), it still has some apples that were too high for the deer to eat. The apples were actually getting ripe in mid-October, and one of them that I picked to eat had a deep crevice in its surface[1]. Down in the bottom of the crevice was this beetle:
Continue reading ‘Lady beetle - Mulsantina picta’ »
8th December 2007, 11:03 am
We get these big honking beetles flying around for a brief period in the late spring/early summer. For us, that means early-to-mid June, so people here call them “June Beetles” or “June Bugs”. Further south, they are “May Beetles”. Last June, this one evidently smacked into the window in our back door overnight and stunned itself[4], which would be why I found it laying on the ground there in the morning.
Continue reading ‘June Beetle’ »
17th November 2007, 01:35 pm
This little beetle was found out back, crawling around in my father-in-law’s hunting blind[1].
Continue reading ‘Three-spotted flea beetle’ »
10th November 2007, 06:30 am
This one looks like a battle-scarred old veteran. I found it near the road, so it is possible that it lost its antenna and fractured a wing cover in an encounter with a passing vehicle[1], not in combat with some predator or prey:
Continue reading ‘Green-Margined Tiger Beetle’ »
13th October 2007, 11:13 am
I was picking up apples in the side yard[1], and found this grub burrowing into one.
These are commonly referred to as “wireworms”. Unlike most other insect grubs, they have a hard exoskeleton that makes them remarkably durable. They are hard to crush, hard to pull apart, and all in all have about the consistency of a piece of wire. They do have legs, which you can see above, but they barely use them and for the most part their behavior is quite wormlike.
Continue reading ‘Click Beetle’ »