beetle
Location: Jamestown, RI
August 18, 2011 5:47 am
Found this pretty little thing in the vegetable garden 5/27/11. Was hanging out on my shirt.
Signature: PeeGee

Scarlet Malachite Beetle

Hi again PeeGee,
At first we thought this might be a Leaf Beetle, but we soon realized that was not correct.  After a bit of searching, we identified your Scarlet Malachite Beetle, Malachius aeneus, one of the Soft Winged Flower Beetles in the family Melyridae.  You can read about the Scarlet Malachite Beetle on BugGuide including this information on its range:  “across southern Canada and northern United States, south in the east to at least North Carolina, south in the west to Oregon  also occurs in Europe, western Asia, and the Middle East  introduced to North America (no info available on date or location).” 

Coolo Dan.  Thanks a lot for that interesting info.  There will probably be more mysteries to come.   Love that you do what you do, so thanks.  PeeGee

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Red winged Beetle?
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I am not sure if this is a fly or a beetle as it does have wings, that are red. Can you tell em what this bug is?
Gary
Edmonton Alberta Canada

Scarlet Malachite Beetle

Hi Gary,
We spent about twenty minutes browsing the tribes and genera and species of Ground Beetles in the family Carabidae on BugGuide to no avail.  We need assistance in the proper identification of your unknown Ground Beetle.  Our best guess is that it may be in the subfamily Carabinae, also represented on BugGuide.

Correction thanks to Eric Eaton
Hi, Daniel:
Ok, well, maybe that is because it is not a ground beetle   The image, a very nice one, is of a “Scarlet Malachite Beetle” :
http://bugguide.net/node/view/50621
Thanks for sharing, regardless of whether you recognized it!
Eric

Ed. Note: This Scarlet Malachite Beetle represents a new family for us, the Soft Winged Flower Beetles in the family Melyridae, which is profiled on BugGuide which indicates they feed upon:  “chiefly insects but food preferences vary; adults evidently feed on flower-visiting insects and pollen, larvae are primarily predators of other insects.“

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Red and black haf inch beetle
June 19, 2009
This little guy has been perplexing me for years. It was about a half inch long, and flew onto the door latch right infront of me. It was slow moving and calm. It had a black head with small flecks of red underneath by the jaws, and the black tapered to a point halfway down the back, leaving the sides of the wings red. I’ve seen a lot of beetles while searching this, that have a similar color pattern, but they are the opposite, with red bodies and black wings. This guy has me stumped.
love the site, keep on buggin
Abi
Upper peninsula MI

Scarlet Malachite Beetle

Hi Abi,
We are trying to catch up on some unanswered emails by skipping around until we find an interesting request.  Your beetle is a new one for us, so we did some research on bugGuide.  This is a Scarlet Malachite Beetle, Malachius aeneus, one of the Soft-Winged Flower Beetles.  BugGuide lists the range as:  “across southern Canada and northern United States, south in the east to at least North Carolina, south in the west to Oregon  also occurs in Europe, western Asia, and the Middle East  introduced to North America (no info available on date or location).”  This remark on BugGuide is also quite interesting:  “In 2005, Buglife, a UK charitable organization devoted to the conservation of invertebrates, lauched the Scarlet Malachite Beetle Project, requesting members of the general public to report sightings of Malachius aeneus, whose numbers have declined in England in recent years. A number of clubs and groups (examples: 1, 2, 3) have joined the project, which has generated a good response and involvement from the public, and has helped to raise awareness of invertebrate conservation issues in general.”

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