Unknown Blue Weevil from Brazil

bugman

February 14th, 2009 at 12:19 pm

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Brilliant
Fri, Feb 13, 2009 at 10:32 AM
This impressive colorful bug was found in a park , near home, where a i use to make some shots of bugs.. Lokkas a weevil, any could say more?
Thanks a lot
Brutamonte
Brazil

Unknown Blue Weevil

Dear Brutamonte,
We believe we have received an image of this gorgeous blue Weevil from Brazil at least once before, but we were not successful in properly identifying it. We do know that it is a Weevil, a type of Beetle. Hopefully, one of our readers will be able to assist us in a proper identification.

Unknown Blue Weevil

Update:
Actually the Weevil we posted in January 2008 is a very different Blue Species.

Update: Unknown Blue Weevil from Brazil
Tue, Feb 24, 2009 at 9:22 AM
Hi Daniel:
You would think that such a striking creature would be relatively easy to track down – but not so. The weevils are a truly enormous and diverse family of coleopterans and, as often happens in taxonomy, the position and naming of this one has changed a bewildering number of times. Thanks to several wonderfully descriptive accounts from the 1800s, the golden age of bug collection, I was able to follow a trail forward that led to the modern genus Ericydeus (Curculionidae : Polydrosinae: Naupactini). There are approximately 16 species in the genus, 2 from North America and the rest from Central and South America. I believe Brutamorte’s weevil is E. sedecimpunctatus, based on early descriptions and reported distribution (throughout central Brazil), but I can’t be certain. The link provided is for a closely related species, E. schonherri; a specimen collected in French Guyana. Regards.
Karl
http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=fr&u=http://www.entomoservice.com/igalerie_1.0.5/%3Fimg%3D952&prev=/search%3Fq%3DEricydeus%26start%3D40%26hl%3Den%26sa%3DN

Update from Karl
August 6, 2009
Catching up on weevils (3 in 1 – sorry about that)
Hi Daniel:
The first part of this is just FYI – a great internet resource. I found a little time to go back and catch up on some wonderful weevils that caught my attention as they were posted. One of my favorite resources for this sort of thing is the digitized version of the Biologia Centrali-Americana (58 volumes!). It is a little difficult to navigate through, but what an incredible storehouse of information! The volumes on insects were originally produced between 1879-1915, but they still stand up as an incredible body of work. The two Costa Rican weevils were identified from this site. Cheers. K

Re: Unknown Blue Weevil from Brazil (Brilliant) – Feb 13, 2009
I didn’t plan to revisit this one, but I have another update (or perhaps and alternate identification). I stumbled upon this image of a weevil specimen from the Natural History Museum in Vienna and it appears to be the very same as the one posted by Brutamonte. The name is given as Polyteles coelestina (Curculionidae: Entiminae). Unfortunately, I was unable to find any more information about it and I am not fully convinced that the identification is correct. It certainly wouldn’t be the first time that an old museum specimen was misidentified. Regards.
Karl