Subject: Strange looking bug
Location: Perth, Western Australia
December 2, 2012 10:18 am
I must say, I’ve never seen anything like this one before. I quickly ran in to grab my phone and snap up some of these pictures. At first it wasn’t moving and I thought it was just something that had fallen off a tree, but then it decided to run! I’ve been looking everywhere for something like this and have absolutely no idea.
Signature: David, Perth, Australia
Hi David,
We love the common name of this Pie Dish Beetle, one of the Darkling Beetles in the family Tenebrionidae. The Brisbane Insect website identifies three species of Pie Dish Beetles in the genus Pterohelaeus, but they do not state how to distinguish them from one another.
Esperance Fauna has a good page on our local Pie-dishes, and how to distinguish them 🙂
http://natureitems.blogspot.com.au/2007/02/21-helea-species-from-se-of-wa.html
Thanks for the link.