Subject: Giant Weevil
Location: Trinidad
April 5, 2015 1:47 am
This beetle was attracted to a light. It looked like a very large broad-nosed weevil to me, maybe 2 cm.
Signature: Steve Nanz
Fungus Weevil
Dear Steve,
We agree that this looks like a Weevil, though we have never seen a Weevil image with such long antennae. That trait is more like a Longicorn in the family Cerambycidae. We have not been able to locate any matching images from either family from Trinidad, or any other place for that matter, so we are posting this beetle without identifying it and we hope to get a second opinion, and perhaps some assistance from our readership.
Longhorned Fungus Weevil
Update
Cesar Crash of Insetologia, a Brazilian site similar to our own, provided us with a link to the Paraguay Biodiversidad site of the family Anthribidae that includes an image of Ptychoderes mixtus that looks identical to the image submitted by Steve. A similar image can be found on the Coleoptera Neotropical site. Anthribidae are commonly called Fungus Weevils.
Eric Eaton confirms
Daniel:
This is a fungus weevil, family Anthribidae. Males of many species have really long antennae.
Eric
Thank you for the update and thanks to Cesar Crash for pointing me toward a possible ID. The descriptions for many in this genus are in German which I don’t speak. However I did find a key to some of the species:
Karl Jordan, 1907. Biologigia Central-America. Insecta. Coleoptera 5(6): 303
http://biodiversitylibrary.org/page/583600#page/315/mode/1up
It appears that Ptychoderes mixtus is a good contender and may be in range. Ptychoderes rugicollis is also possible. Barcoding Life images show the latter with shorter antennae. There are no images of the former. So P. mixtus does seem like a reasonable tentative ID.
Best Regards,
Steve Nanz
I like ThisRelated posts:
I have an illustration in a book Ptychoderes nebulosus (Anthribidae). that is quite identical. But the one with such lon antennae in PyBio is Ptychoderes mixtus: http://www.pybio.org/676/anthribidae/
Thanks Cesar,
Your assistance is greatly appreciated.