Categories
Scarab BeetlesUnknown beetle
My husband and I found this interesting beetle flying around our porch light this evening in south central Alabama. It is about an inch long, and nearly as wide. I looked on all 12 pages of beetle pictures on your website, and couldn’t find one like it. It looks somewhat similar to the Colorado Potato Beetle, but the stripe pattern is a bit different, and the head is solid black. Any ideas what this bad boy might be??
Avery and Lance Garner
Hi Avery and Lance,
We believe this is some species of Earth-Boring Dung Beetle in the family Geotrupidae, but we can’t tell which. BugGuide has quite a few species listed. We will see if Eric Eaton can at least narrow it down to genus level. It must have taken you some time to go through all 12 of our beetle pages.
Daniel: The dung beetle (4/22) is an actual scarab, Dichotomius carolinus. Apparently they are pretty common, but I’ve only collected one specimen in the eastern U.S. myself. They bury dung balls, but don’t roll them as Canthon dung beetles do.
Eric
I like ThisRelated Posts
-
(09/01/2005)Dung Beetle -
(10/01/2007)Dung Beetle -
(07/29/2007)Dung Beetle with Dung Ball and Fanmail -
(01/10/2010)Dung Beetle from South Africa
Notify me of followup comments via e-mail. You can also subscribe without commenting.
Post a Comment
You must be logged in to post a comment.