Subject: Beetle Identification
Location: Malwa plateau,India
September 7, 2013 7:38 am
Hello Bugman,first time submitter long time visitor,great job you people are doing :).I have found some interesting critters from Madhya Pradesh, India and i am very good at following clues in my google searches but these two buggers i can’t identify (one is a hoverfly and second one is a beetle)..All photos are mine.BTW,what if i find a new species?
Signature: flyingbirdman
White Spotted Fruit Chafer
Dear flyingbirdman,
We believe we have correctly identified your Scarab Beetle as a White Spotted Fruit Chafer, Mausoleopsis amabilis. We began with a web search of “spotted scarab India” and found a funny blog called Elephant’s Eye with some photos that look very similar to your beetle. Armed with a name, we found numerous sites including BioDiversity Explorer with images of the White Spotted Fruit Chafer from South Africa. Project Noah places the species in India as well. We will also attempt to identify your Hover Fly.
I like ThisRelated posts:
here is another site
http://www.ispot.org.za/search/node/beetle
I think ispot began in Britain, and various countries have joined in.
PS Diana of Elephant’s Eye blog
Though we didn’t delve too deeply into your blog, we did enjoy the posting we linked to.
Thanks Diana.
It does look like the white fruit chafer but i have to disagree,India shares many of its species with Africa so it may be possible that this beetle is a sub species of white chafer.Chafer is black and this one is metallic and the spots are different too.No luck on hoverfly then? Satpura hills have many insects I’ve never seen on the internet..Its okay,thanks for the help.
This is Scarabaeidae, Cetoniinae, Protaetia alboguttata or Protaetia (Indoprotaetia) alboguttata with Protaetia being the genus and Indoprotaetia being the subgenus.
http://projects.biodiversity.be/openup/rbins/2543.jpg
http://www.biolib.cz/en/taxonimage/id218251/
http://www.projectnoah.org/spottings/467536012
http://indiabiodiversity.org/observation/show/352860
http://www.projectnoah.org/spottings/1711096019
Thanks for the information and the numerous links.