Spotted Lax Beetle from Australia

bugman

December 30th, 2008 at 12:10 pm

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Spotted Beetle (?)
Sun, Dec 28, 2008 at 8:22 PM
We found two of these fellows crawling on the inside of a lampshade. I’ve only seen one once before, in a bathroom in Northland, New Zealand. Both sightings were in houses with plenty of moderately untended garden, so they may have wandered in from there… any help identifying would be much appreciated.
David
Auckland, New Zealand

soldier beetle spotted australia david 300x186 Spotted Lax Beetle from Australia

Unknown Soldier Beetle

Hi David,
We believe this is a Soldier Beetle in the family Cantharidae, but we cannot find a matching specimen on the Brisbane Insect web site. Perhaps one of our readers can provide a species specific identification for this distinctive beetle.

Correction
Nice image of what I’m thinking might be some kind of “false blister beetle” in the family Oedemeridae. I’m sending a query to my entomology listserv to see if anyone can confirm my suspicion of Oedemeridae, and perhaps give a genus and species….
Eric Eaton

Confirmation
Eric is right, it is an Oedemeridae. It the Spotted lax beetle, Parisopalpus nigronotatus, found in Australia and NZ.
Diane.

Thanks Diane and Eric,
Though we wanted to try to link to other online postings of this species, we only found one listing on the New Zealand Landcare Research web site without images.

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Comments 1

dcj25 wrote:
Eric is right, it is an Oedemeridae. It the Spotted lax beetle, Parisopalpus nigronotatus, found in Australia and NZ.
Diane.
Posted 30 Dec 2008 at 3:12 pm ¶