From "A Beetle Utopia on an Artist's Conk Fungus" at Scientific American. Artist's conks are "woody shelf fungi that cling to the trunks of trees."
Every single life phase of some sort of beetle was playing out in and around these conks simultaneously....Well, look at those photographs. That beetle looks familiar!
I tried searching the wikigooglepediatron for the identity of these beetles, but I came up empty. If any entomologists reading know what this beetle is, please tell me!...
The black spots on the blue beetles were also a treat – like something out of Dr. Seuss.... Surely, surely, someone out there knows the identity of this huge, gorgeous beetle, who seems to have a highly specialized relationship with what appears to to be the fungus Ganoderma aplanatum – the artist's conk...Back in July 2014, we were walking in the foothills by Boulder, Colorado, and we were talking to a young woman, a passerby, and she spotted something on the ground, picked it up on a rock, and held it out for me to photograph:
It's the same beetle Scientific American didn't know!
IN THE COMMENTS: Larry Davis said:
Pleasing Fungus Beetle - Gibbifer CalifornicusI added the link. He seems to be right. Thanks, Larry!
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In New Orleans there is an insect museum called the Insectarium. Lots of gross stuff but also one room full of gorgeous beetle displays, artfully arranged. It's worth a visit for this display alone.
Pleasing Fungus Beetle - Gibbifer Californicus
Nature:
A beetle, rolling along the ground with its mandibles and antennae a ball whose principal components were compounded of excrement, was advancing rapidly towards the above hillock, bent on displaying its determination to take that direction. This articulate animal was not much bigger than a cow! If anyone doubts what I say, let them come to me and through the testimony of good witnesses I will satisfy the most incredulous. I followed the beetle at a distance, openly puzzled. What was it going to do with that great black ball?
- Lautreamont
I've never understood a single article in Scientific American.
There's a story about some famous smart guy, Haldane, I think, who was asked what his study of evolutionary biology had taught him about the Creator.
"He seems to have been inordinately fond of beetles," was his response, if I'm remembering that correctly.
You can look it up, if it matters.
I hate to be a stick-in-the-mud, but it must be pointed out that the universal rules of taxonomy dictate that species names are never capitalized. It's Gibbifer californicus.
J.B.S. Haldane, a seminal figure in the field of genetics during it's faltering infancy, and a very entertaining writer, but an example of a type of mentality that unfortunately for peace and human progress is all too common -- the political moron. The political moron is completely unable to turn the powers of his often formidable intellect to questions of social or political import. The political moron is the unlucky blind squirrel that never finds a nut. He is the broken clock that never shows the correct time, and the peculiarly reliable compass that, no matter where on the horizon North abides, never points toward it.
That is one beautiful beetle.
Had a metallic-green figeater beetle land on my shoulder last week. Made my day.
I'm willing to cut Haldane a little slack because of a fine title he came up with: "On Being the Right Size".
I live in Californicus, and I've never seen one.
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