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

Unidentified Weevil from 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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Big orange head beetle
Thu, Feb 26, 2009 at 2:20 AM
Hi, I saw this beetle moving slowly over rocks during the day in the garden. I only had my phone camera which is not great but you should have some idea. It has big black eyes, which at first I thought were decoys to make it look bigger. The bug was about the size of a big man’s thumb with a long orange proboscis. Wasn’t bothered by my getting close to it.
Chris
Chiangmai Thailand

Red Palm Weevil

Dear Chris,
All we have time to do is to post your photo, and we hope to be able to identify the species of Weevil in the family Curculionidae this weekend. A Weevil this size and this distinctive should not be too difficult to properly identify. To be more accurate, the orange body part is the thorax.

Immediate Update:
As soon as we posted, we decided to look up the Palm Weevil from the Southeast that looks quite similar. The Palm Weevil, Rhynchophorus cruentatus, can be found on BugGuide. When we researched the genus and Thailand, we found a pdf on the Red Palm Weevil, Rhynchophorus ferrugineus.

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Costa Rican beetle
Mon, Feb 9, 2009 at 12:57 PM
We were in Costa Rica this January, and found this beetle on the floor of the patio one evening. I’d estimate it was 4 or 5 inches long. The people we were staying with hadn’t seen anything like it before. I’m curious what type of beetle it is, and if the orange “fuzz” on it is part of the beetle, or some sort of pollen or fungal infection.
Dawn
Costa Rica (Central Pacific)

Weevil from Costa Rica

Hi Dawn,
We haven’t the time at the moment to identify the species, but this is a Weevil. We are relatively certain we have identified this species in the past and it is in our Weevil archives. The fuzz is a characteristic of the weevil, and is neither pollen nor fungus.

Thanks so much for your response! I did look through the archive before writing, but missed the “earlier posts” link. It is in there, and it looks like it’s a Bottlebrush Weevil ( Rhinostomus barbirostris) .
Dawn

Thanks for doing our research Dawn. We were certain we had identified it once before.

Clarification:
Daniel:
You are quite right, this weevil has appeared on WTB before, in fact it has been posted at least twice (Jordan from Costa Rica – 12 March 2007; Lisa from Panama – 02 May 2006). It was previously identified as the ‘Bottlebrush Weevil’ (Rhinostomus barbirostris) and the Cuban Weevil (Rhina oblita). To clarify (or perhaps confuse) Rhinostomus barbirostris was formerly Rhina barbirostris, and Rhina oblita has been changed to Rhinostomus oblitus. They both look quite similar but their distributions are different. The reported distribution for R. oblitus is Cuba, Hispaniola, the Bahamas and perhaps Mexico and Brazil. R. barbirostris occurs in southern Mexico, Central America and most of South America. Based on that, I suggest it is probably R. barbirostris, the Bottlebrush Weevil. Both species feed on a variety of palms but are not considered a pest because they tend to target old or otherwise stressed trees. Regards.
Karl

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