Beetles
awild | August 22, 2008
Ochthebius sp. Minute Moss Beetles (Hydraenidae)
Pyramid Lake, Nevada
Tiny flea like specks
Move among the algal slime.
Oh! Hydraenidae!
photo details: Canon MP-E 65mm 1-5x macro lens on a Canon D60
ISO 100, f/13, 1/200 sec, flash diffused through tracing paper
awild | August 15, 2008
Pelidnota punctata - Grapevine Beetle
Champaign, Illinois
Here it is: the first insect I've photographed since moving to Illinois last week. I've been posting a lot of scarab beetles recently, but can you blame me? They're so pretty.
photo details: Canon 100mm f2.8 macro lens on a Canon 20D
ISO 100, f/11, 1/200 sec, indirect strobe in white box.
awild | August 13, 2008Our first paper from the Beetle Tree of Life study has been published. Here's the citation:
Wild, A. L. & Maddison, D. R. 2008. Evaluating nuclear protein-coding genes for phylogenetic utility in beetles. Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution, doi: 10.1016/j.ympev.2008.05.023
My co-author David Maddison once summarized the point of the paper as "Hey guys! New genes!"
What we've done is develop lab protocols for sequencing 8 nuclear genes that should be particularly useful for inferring the evolutionary history of beetles. It's a foundational paper. We created the methods that will…
awild | August 8, 2008
Cicindela lemniscata - White-Lined Tiger Beetle
Arizona, USA
This one is for Ted, who has an excellent blog about Tiger Beetles.
photo details: Canon MP-E 65mm 1-5x macro lens on a Canon 20D
ISO 100, f/13, 1/250 sec, flash diffused through tracing paper.
awild | August 1, 2008
Strategus aloeus - Ox Beetles, female (left) and male
Arizona, USA
Impressive pronotal horns mark the male in these sexually dimorphic scarabs. Strategus aloeus is found in the southern United States from Florida to Arizona.
photo details, top photo: Canon 100mm f2.8 macro lens on a Canon 20D
f/9, 1/200sec, ISO 100, indirect strobe in a white box
bottom photo: Canon 100mm f2.8 macro lens on a Canon 20D
f/14, 1/200sec, ISO 200, indirect strobe in a white box
awild | July 25, 2008
Cotinus mutabilis - Fig Beetle
Tucson, Arizona
A few weeks ago we started noticing these giant green scarabs flying about Tucson. They're about the same size and clumsiness in the air as carpenter bees, but brilliant green in color. My wife- a bit of a bug geek herself- was given a few for her birthday last year by one of her customers at the market where she works.
If you ever encounter a fig beetle larva, be prepared for something truly weird. They ignore the fact that they have legs and walk upside-down, lying on their backs, their little legs pointed up.
photo details, top photo:…
awild | July 18, 2008
Apatides fortis (Bostrichidae), the Horned Powder-Post Beetle
Tucson, Arizona
These robust wood-boring beetles have been common at my blacklight in early monsoon season. Good thing, too. We collected a few for the Beetle Tree of Life study, and they've been one of the easier beetles to produce DNA sequence for our project.
photo details: Canon MP-E 65mm 1-5x macro lens on a Canon 20D
ISO 100, f/14, 1/250 sec
indirect strobe in a white box
awild | July 4, 2008
Chrysina (=Plusiotis) gloriosa - The Glorious Beetle
Huachuca Mountains, Arizona
Few of Arizona's beetles are as spectacular as the jewel scarabs in the genus Chrysina. They are most readily collected by blacklight (as in Kojun's handful o' beetles) in juniper forests in the weeks following the arrival of the monsoon.
photo details: Canon 100mm f2.8 macro lens on a Canon 20D
Indirect strobe fired into white box
awild | June 5, 2008
Derobrachus hovorei - Palo Verde Borer
Cerambycidae
Tucson, Arizona
Every June, hundreds of thousands of giant beetles emerge from beneath the Tucsonian soil. The enormous size of these beetles- up to several inches long- makes them among the most memorable of Tucson's insects. They cruise about clumsily in the evenings, flying at eye level as they disperse and look for mates.
Palo Verde beetles spend most of their lives as subterranean grubs feeding on the roots of Palo Verde trees. Adults emerge in early summer, usually ahead of the monsoon, and by August they are gone.
It is still a…
awild | May 30, 2008
Cymatodera sp. Checkered Beetle (Cleridae)
Arizona
photo details: Canon 100mm f2.8 macro lens on a Canon 20D
f/16, 1/250 sec, ISO 100, indirect strobe in a white box
awild | May 23, 2008
Olla v-nigrum - Ashy Grey Ladybird Beetle
Arizona
Here it is: the very first ladybird beetle featured on the Friday Beetle Blog. Instead of a boring ol' red and black one, I've chosen a stylish and tasteful beetle colored in grayscale: the Ashy Gray Ladybird. These have been arriving in some numbers at my blacklight this week. Like most members of the family Coccinelidae, Olla beetles are predators.
photo details: Canon MP-E 65mm 1-5x macro lens on a Canon 20D
f/13, 1/250 sec, ISO 100, twin flash diffused through tracing paper
awild | May 16, 2008
Carpophilus sp. Sap Beetle, Nitidulidae
Arizona
The Opuntia prickly-pear cacti have been flowering the past few weeks. Every time I poke at a blossom I find several chunky Carpophilus beetles.
photo details: Canon MP-E 65mm 1-5x macro lens on a Canon 20D
f/13, 1/250 sec, ISO 100, twin flash diffused through tracing paper
awild | May 9, 2008
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 under stones in fast-running creeks. Because adults have a morphology suggestive of the terrestrial ground beetles, some researchers have proposed that Amphizoa represents an evolutionary transition between terrestrial and…
awild | May 2, 2008
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 common name: Glow-worms.
In stark contrast to their grubby counterparts, male phengodids are delicate creatures, adapted for dispersal and mating. The male pictured above flew to a blacklight behind my house. I don't see phengodids all that often at the light,…
awild | April 24, 2008
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 prevent dessication.
Eusattus is not the easiest photographic subject. It seemed uncomfortable out in the open and would burrow as soon as I placed it on the sand. The series below spans 30 seconds.
**update** Tenebrionid expert Kojun Kanda…
awild | April 18, 2008
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 of harvester ant colonies.
photo details: Canon MP-E 65mm 1-5x macro lens on a Canon 20D
f/13, 1/250 sec, ISO 100, twin flash diffused through tracing paper
Beetles collected by Kojun Kanda.
awild | April 11, 2008
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 spends most of its time secluded in the dark would need such a brilliant metallic sheen, if the color serves a purpose or is just a spandrel. In any case, this beetle ended up donating its body to science. It is one of several representative…
awild | April 4, 2008
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 reflex-bleed out their joints when threatened:
photo details (top) Canon 100mm f2.8 macro lens on a Canon 20D
f/13, 1/250 sec, ISO 100, indirect strobe in white box.
(bottom) Canon MP-E 65mm 1-5x macro lens on a Canon 20D
f/13, 1/250 sec, ISO 100, flash…
awild | March 31, 2008via 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?
awild | March 24, 2008
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- the honeybee, the mosquito, and now the flour beetle- the more we see that the famed Drosophila fruit fly is an odd little beast. The bee and now the beetle, it turns out, are both rather normal. They share a lot of proteins with mammals, and fish, and other animals we…