Beetle riding the bus
Location: Essex County, Ontario
July 24, 2010 1:44 pm
Hi there,
I encountered an unusual looking beetle yesterday while riding the bus. It was narrow and about an inch long, and the elytra was a yellowish-orange. It lifted these once or twice during the ride to fly against the window, so I know it also had functional wings.
What I found really interesting though was the pattern of spots; they looked like little white flowers.
Didn’t have a camera at the time, so I’ve included a drawing of what the elytra roughly looked like.
Thanks!
John
try looking at Ivory Marked Beetle photos.
Hi Daniel,
Thanks for the quick reply.
I looked at the photos for the ivory-marked beetle on bugguide
(http://bugguide.net/node/view/2873/bgimage), and it doesn’t appear to be a match at all. The spots were definitely 4-clusters, and the colour of its back was yellow-orange instead of the brown in those pictures. If I come across a good match I’ll reply with a link.
Update: August 2, 2010
Hello again Daniel,
Checking back on your site, I see other readers have requested the same bug. What I saw was the Ailanthus Webworm Moth.
Thanks for your help.
Hi again John,
IN retrospect, that makes sense. We limited our identifications to beetles and did not even consider you might have seen a moth. We are posting our email exchange along with a photo of an Ailanthus Webworm Moth submitted recently for comparison to your drawing.
