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Unidentified

Beetle in Costa Rica
Sat, Jun 13, 2009 at 9:49 PM
Hi,
I was walking my dog today in the mountains above the central valley of San Jose, Costa Rica when I came across this beautiful beetle. Can’t tell you too much about it other than it was about 1.5 inches in length and that the ends of its legs were beautiful. I’ve been scouring the internet to find out more about this thing (is it some sort of weevil?) but having limited knowledge in entomology I think I’ll leave this to an expert.
Thomas W.
Bebedero (Escazu), Costa Rica

Hi Thomas,
We are still sifting through our backlog for our week away from posting, hence the delay in responding.  This is a beautiful Weevil, but we haven’t the time at the moment to try for a species identification.  Weevils are in the family Curculionidae, and according to BugGuide, it is the:  “Largest family of beetles in the world with more than 40,000 species worldwide, and 2,500 species in North America.”  We hope one of our readers had an opportunity to identify your Weevil and can supply us with an answer.

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
Daniel:
Re: Unknown Weevil from Costa Rica (Beetle in Costa Rica) – Jun 13, 2009
This weevil is in the genus Cratosomus (Curculionidae: Conoderinae [=Zygopinae]), probably C. punctulatus. The species is quite wide spread; particularly common in Mexico, but ranging south to Peru, and east to Trinidad. The species is apparent highly variable in appearance and ranges from 13-23 mm in length (i.e., big). Regards.
Karl

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