rss Georgia bug identity?
Location: Savannah, Georgia
August 14, 2011 6:10 pm
My cousin photographed this bug a few days ago. We would love to know what he/she is. It’s a pretty bug!
Signature: Jennifer
Rustic Borer, perhaps
Hi Jennifer,
We believe, based on this photo posted to BugGuide, that your beetle is a Rustic Borer, Xylotrechus colonus. According to Bugguide: “Larvae feed under the bark (occasionally in the bark) of hickory and other hardwoods, also pine.”
Like our good friend Susan Lutz of Eat Sunday Dinner, we find ways to procrastinate. Susan now procrastinates by cooking and developing new recipes, like her Procrastination Spaghetti Sauce, and though we have other commitments, we frequently defer them by turning to all the marvelous email requests that are sent to What’s That Bug? We are supposed to be writing a letter of recommendation for Elizabeth who is applying for a Fulbright Scholar Award, and as the deadline looms upon us, all of the writing to date has been in our mind. We turned to an old computer for some historical records involving Elizabeth, and we realized that a marvelous photo taken by Joshua Stanley and Marnia Johnston of the Tarantula Hawk on Milkweedfrom our archives was there in its high resolution form. The photo predates both the acquisition of our new office computer and the site migration we underwent several years ago. From the current computer and our current WTB? access, only a thumbnail version of this photo was available, and we are now thrilled to republish the image in a higher resolution form. Just click on the photo to see an enlarged version. You can do this with all of the photos that were posted after our site migration.
Tarantula Hawk and Milkweed Longhorn on Milkweed
The reason we are especially interested in having a larger resolution version of this photo available is that we have become very interested in the complex ecosystem surrounding milkweed, and we have recently created a Milkweed Meadow tag. We want to propose a slide presentation and talk to the Theodore Payne Foundation on the insects associated with milkweed, with a concentration of Southern California species that depend upon Esclapias eriocarpa, Indian Milkweed, and other native Milkweeds that can be purchased at the TPF nursery. To bring our procrastination full circle, that is Elizabeth weeding recently in Elyria Canyon Park.
Elizabeth Weeds in the Elyria Canyon Park Milkweed Meadow
Large Green Irridescent Beetle-looking bug
Location: San Fernando Valley CA
August 14, 2011 8:37 am
Hi ~ I recently moved to southern California (Winnetka CA), and these bugs are flying all over the place for the last few months (summer). I was terrified at first but someone told me they aren’t harmful. They are actually quite beautiful and they fly really slowly at times and you can catch them! I found this one dead on my driveway. What is it?
Signature: Best regards, Annette
Figeater
Hi Annette,
Though it looks and sounds like a large bee while flying, you are correct that the Green Fruit Beetle, Cotinis mutabilis, is perfectly harmless, though they will eat your backyard fruit. If you have large numbers of them, you must have a nearby food source for either the adults of the larvae. Adults feed on peaches, figs and other summer fruits, and we love the common name Figeater. Larvae are found in compost piles and they are called Crawlybacks.
Figeater
Daniel ~ Thank you so much!!
My neighbor has a LOT of fruit trees in his back yard. And he just brought over a pile of FIGS the other day J That explains it.
So glad I finally know what they are called.
Thanks again and have a wonderful week!
Annette
Beetle
Location: King County Washington State USA
August 13, 2011 3:26 pm
What is this bug is founding flying around my garden? Caught this shot on the trim of the garage while it was cleaning.
Signature: Greta
Longhorned Borer Beetle
Beetle ID email
August 13, 2011 3:30 pm
wow, just as I hit send moments ago, I saw a huge grammatical error in my post. . . possible to edit if you end up posting on your site?
apologies.
Signature: Greta
Hi Greta,
We received your comment on your grammatical error, but we find it so amusing that a Longhorned Borer Beetle was cleaning that we are leaving your original submission as is. We don’t thing anyone will think less of you for making an error that you immediately recognized. We try to instill in our photography students that making errors if perfectly natural, and the best photographers will recognize the errors and make compensations on the spot, either by reshooting or by making corrections during the processing stage. Not recognizing errors is a vastly greater problem than making errors. We believe we have correctly identified your Longhorned Borer Beetle as Xestoleptura crassicornis based on photos posted to BugGuide, however, we may be wrong. The range of the beetle is also consistent with your location.
Green/Blue Beetle
Location: Phnom Penh, Cambodia
August 13, 2011 9:24 am
Hi,
hoping you can help identify this little beauty.
Found on a rose bush in Phnom Penh, Cambodia – mid afternoon, rainy season.
Signature: C
Frog Legged Leaf Beetle
Dear C,
If you are interested in more than a name, you can find all the research we have done to identify a previous submission of the Frog Legged Leaf Beetle, Sagra femorata, by reading our archives.
Metallic green bug
Location: Waterloo, Ontario
August 12, 2011 5:31 pm
Any idea what these are? I saw several of them while walking in the woods on an overcast day. They were 1-2cm long. The bright metallic green colour really made them stand out. It was nice to see more than just mosquitoes!
Signature: Andrew
Six Spotted Tiger Beetle
Hi Andrew,
This is a predatory Six Spotted Tiger Beetle, Cicindela sexguttata, and we typically get the most identification requests in the spring, though BugGuide does list sightings as late as September and even October. Your multiple sightings this late in the season is significant, though we are not exactly certain how to process that information. Perhaps global climate change is not a myth. The iris and tomatoes were dismal this year in the garden outside our Southern California office after all, and the huajes are currently late.
Wonders from Malaysian Borneo!
Location: Malaysian Borneo
August 12, 2011 9:09 pm
Hey Bug-people!
A challenge for you!
I took myself backpacking through Southeast Asia a while ago, and came back with some amazing pictures of bugs.
I’ve included three of what were to me the most fascinating and baffling varieties. Can you help me identify them?
Cheers!
Signature: Doug
Netwing Beetle Larva, or Firefly Larva
Hi again Doug,
We have split up your question into separate postings. … Your third insect is a larval Firefly not unlike this North American example. Did we meet your challenge?
Wow! I guess everything’s bigger on Borneo, because that larval Firefly was nearly three inches long!
Thanks for that. The info about the flatworm was particularly fascinating.
Doug
Hi again Doug,
We are ready to research the Bornean Firefly Larva, though we cannot discount that it might be a Netwing Beetle Larvae. Eric Eaton says the way to tell the difference it to introduce a snail. If the beetle larva eats the snail, it is a Firefly Larva. If it prefers fungus, it is a Netwing Beetle Larva. We imagine that there may also be snail and fungus specificity in the preferences. Here is an example from The Flying Kiwi of a Larviform female Netwing Beetle from Viet Nam, and here is another example of a Netwing Beetle and The Flying Kiwi‘s, AKA Richard Seaman’s, written account: “I didn’t notice that this one in Malaysia was glowing, but it turns out that both this and the Vietnamese “firefly” aren’t fireflies at all, they’re actually the larvae of net-winged beetles in the genus Duliticola, otherwise known as “trilobite larvae” because of their prehistoric shape; the one you see here is Duliticola hoiseni. The drops of liquid on this one’s back look like they are some toxic substance exuded for protection, I’m not sure if that was for my benefit or whether it was already feeling stressed when I arrived.” Interestingly, last year Bert traveled to Malaysia and he sent us a Netwing Beetle or Firefly Larva as well as a Land Planarian. Though there are similarities, they are both distinctly different for your examples. We imagine there is great diversity in the jungles, and there may also be distinct local populations that over time have developed into distinctly different looking relatives that may or may not be different species.
Identification Request: Amusing photo
Location: Phoenix Arizona
August 11, 2011 4:07 pm
This isn’t a question, just something you might find amusing. Our group of beetles at the zoo – the male doesn’t seem to be content with his regular girls. He was very determined to create a new hybrid. The female was just annoyed. If the photo doesn’t go through let me know and I’ll send it via regular email as attachment.
Cheers,
Paula Swanson, Phoenix Zoo
Signature: For your amusement
Interspecies Mating: Male Glorious Scarab and Female Ox Beetle
Dear Paula,
We are more than amused. You don’t have a question, but we can probably think of about a hundred we would like to ask about this Inter-Species Mating documentation from the Phoenix Zoo. We hope you will be able to answer them. You mentioned you have a group of beetles at the zoo. Do you have a full insect zoo? Is the insect zoo popular? Do you have an entomologist on staff? How many different beetles are kept in the same habitat? What is the habitat like? Are other insects in the beetle habitat? Are all the beetles in your beetle habitat strictly local beetles? How did the beetles come to be acquired by the zoo? Can you confirm that the male beetle is a Glorious Scarab, Chrysina gloriosa? Are you attempting an actual Glorious Scarab mating program that will re-release beetles into the wild? Can you confirm that the female beetle is an Ox Beetle in the genus Strategus? There are at least two species found in Arizona, the wider ranging Strategus aloeus (see BugGuide), and the more local Strategus cessus (see BugGuide). Might the “female” be a Rhinoceros Beetle, Xyloryctes jamaicensis (see BugGuide)? We sometimes have difficulty distinguishing between Strategus and Xyloryctes. Are you certain the Ox Beetle is a female? The profile makes us wonder if she might actually be a minor male which have smaller horns. Here is a BugGuide photo of a female Strategus aloeus, and a BugGuide photo of a minor male. Thank you for indulging our curiousity. We want to repeat that we are more than amused by this inter-species mating attempt. It actually might be successful if both members were in the same genus, but a successful mating between genera, despite them being in the same family, is highly unlikely (most folks would say impossible) to produce viable offspring. We are also going to contact Eric Eaton to see if he can confirm the identities of the beetles in your photo.
Ed. NOte: We wrote to Eric Eaton to see if he could determine the identities of this inter-species coupling.
Eric Eaton Responds inconclusively
I honestly can’t answer those questions. Ok, it probably is a male Chrysina gloriosa…. [Regarding the "female" being either Strategus or Xyloryctes] Oh, yes, definitely, and *probably* Strategus, given that I don’t think anyone collected any Xyloryctes down here at the conference (I attended with a couple folks from the Phoenix Zoo – shout out to Sarah and Melanie).
Eric
Hello. Paula asked me to reply to your email as I am the primary keeper of our invertebrate collection, and the one who collected them!
Funny thing, Eric Eaton was actually there when I collected these beetles during the IECC conference in Rio Rico, AZ. The beetles in the photo have been confirmed as a male Chrysina gloriosa and a female Strategus aloeus. I was very surprised to find the male gloriosa trying to hard to mate with the female ox beetle! I don’t think he was succesful in his attempts, but it was certainly amusing to watch him try. The beetles are still in “quarantine” and are housed together in a simple mesh cage, without any substrate. They will likely remain together in a multi species exhibit once they leave quarantine. The species in that enclosure currently include Cotinis mutabilis, Chrysina beyeri, Chrysina gloriosa, Megasoma punctulatus (a single male), and the lone female Strategus aloeus.
Currently we are not even trying to breed any of the large scarab beetles – but have been working with some true bugs, lubbers, and smaller beetle species. This is only our second year collecting and exhibiting such a wide variety of native invertebrates. We have a small building dedicated to exhibiting and breeding invertebrates. Currently we have 12 small (10 gallon or less) exhibits in the building, one larger enclosure, and window space for more – in time. It is a fairly popular exhibit, as far as visitor time spent looking at it anyway. I don’t hear people talking about the exhibit much during their visit elsewhere at the zoo, but they definitely enjoy looking at all the bugs when they are there – especially children, they just love bugs! Currently we are working with native AZ species only (aside from a couple of “exotic” roach species anyway…). We do not have an entomologist on staff, but rely heavily on the friends we’ve made at the IECC conferences for proper ID’s and tips on husbandry. And I have learned A LOT over the past year.
If you have any other questions I would be happy to answer them, it’s always good to make new “buggy” friends 
Sarah Simko
Senior Reptile Keeper
Phoenix Zoo
Wow Sarah,
Thanks for such a concise and thorough response. Our readers will be very happy with the information you provided.
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