Paracotalpa ursina

Unofficially this attractive beetle has been called the little bear beetle. Officially it is Paracotalpa ursina - which literally means the little bear Paracotalpa. And the bear is easy enough to imagine with the long setae (hair) and the plump body. The beetle belongs to the family Scarabaeidae - notice the fan-like antennae. It is a bit over half an inch long but seems bigger, especially as it climbs up grass stems and topples them over with its weight.

Jon and Michael found a population of the beetles last week in a city park here in Fresno and I went out yesterday to see them myself. There is something about a scarab in flight - with its elevated wing covers, low buzzing and erratic flight - that gets my beetle juices flowing. Museum specimens of this insect tend to be dull reddish brown. Live specimens have a much deeper red color. They're a sight to behold. Sadly, there were several along the park trail that had been smashed.

The place where the beetles were flying is not all that remarkable. It's maybe a quarter of a mile from the San Joaquin River and is just a fenced-off area with tall grass and a few other plant species. But that's often how you find interesting insects. They don't always live in the places we would consider ideal. And a grassy path in a park seems to be just fine for these brightly colored bruins.

Eleodes gigantea

Eleodes gigantea is a big black darkling beetle common throughout California in dry areas. It gets to be about an inch long and is really the epitome of the so-called "stink beetle". There are several species of Eleodes throughout the Western US and Mexico but E. gigantea is certainly one of the biggest. It is also one of the most - how should I describe it - expressive. Once it gets bothered, it sticks its rear end into the air, threatening to give off a foul odor, if anybody gets too close.



Last November, Michael decided he wanted to do a science fair project on these insects. He wanted to see if they had evolved their defense response as a protection more from aerial predators than from terrestrial ones. He made silhouettes of a predatory bird and another one the same size of a fox. Then Michael, Jon and I took a trip out past Coalinga (southwest of Fresno) to find the creatures. We spent 2 days driving around mountain roads and ended up finding several individuals that Michael exposed to the two silhouettes.

Michael thought that the beetles would go into defensive mode quicker when exposed to the fox. After all there are a lot of terestrial predators around - including a lot of non-native cats and dogs. But the beetles were much quicker to respond to the bird. It was a fun project and leaves open a lot of questions that somebody doing more than a high school science fair project might want to tackle.

In any event, the canyon was nice. Not too many insects were out (it was November) but the cool weather didn't seem to bother the beetles.

Hypera brunneipennis

This time of year alfalfa can really be hit hard by weevils. Here in the Central Valley we have to deal with the Egyptian alfalfa weevil (Hypera brunneipennis). These pictures are from about a week ago on a plot that has had a heavy infestation the last few years. As you can see the feeding damage can be significant.This first picture is of a mature larva - the stage that does most of the damage. Smaller larvae don't eat nearly as much as the larger ones. This particular individual is about a quarter of an inch long.

It surprises me how much of a problem these weevils have become. They are really not that hard to control if you disrupt their life cycle with an early cutting. This only needs to be done once (on the year's first growth) because the insect only goes through a single generation a year. Here in the Central Valley, a cutting around the middle of March would kill most of the population. A good pyrethroid will do a good job too if you decide to wait and make the first cutting with a more mature crop.

The Second picture is of the cocoon. When the larva gets as big as it is going to get, it will find a secluded place on the plant (sometimes on the ground) and encircle itself with a silky protective covering. You can see that it isn't as tightly constructed as the cocoons of other insects but it does the job at keeping most predators and parasitoids away.

This last picture is the mature adult - no doubt out looking for a mate

Epilachna abrupta

Plant-feeding ladybird beetles are not something that many people know about. We have a couple of species in the United States (the Mexican bean beetle and the squash beetle) but they are usually not associated with ladybirds in most people's mind. In the tropics, however, there are a lot more species and many of them are quite large. These pictures are of Epilachna abrupta a species that I believe feeds on the same solanaceous plant it is resting on here. I have no idea which species it is (I'm not much of a botanist) but the leaves are nearly a foot long. The plant itself is over 6 feet tall and fairly stout spines project from the midrib (visible in the second picture). These beetles are nearly half an inch long.

I found them by the side of the road while climbing up (east) into the cloud forest out of San Jose, Costa Rica last May. A soft rain was falling but the couple of mating pairs that I found seemed not to be bothered underneath the large green leaves.

The color pattern of the species is variable. Robert Gordon's revision of the species of the Western Hemisphere illustrates both this form and one with a dark band across the middle of the elytra. Too bad there weren't any larvae around. I expect that they would be quite impressive. The Epilachna larvae that I have seen are covered with branching spines. The landscape shot is from the same cloud forest.

Stolas lebasii

Thanks to Ted MaCrae's post (beetlesinthebush.wordpress.com) on February 25 (and Lech Borowiec's excellent cassidine interactive manual) I have been able to place a name on this beautiful tortoise beetle I ran across last spring in Costa Rica. It is Stolas lebasii. I have seen it a few times in Central America in forested areas and it always manages to make me stop and marvel at its deep metallic green color and bright spots.

For a leaf beetle it is quite large, almost half an inch long. When you look at a live one in its natural habitat it always seems much bigger. I found this individual on a forested path in the Wilson Botanical Area near the Panamanian border. As you can see there were a lot of bromeliads and other epiphytes hanging from moss-covered trees along the trail. Various tree ferns were also abundant.

It was a quiet damp place with the distant warbling of tropical birds and the occasional buzzing of forest insects. In such a place one could spend years and still not see every species that lives there. For travelers to southern Costa Rica wishing to see monkeys, sloths and various tropical birds all together in a package, the Osa Peninsula may be a better place to visit. If, however, one wishes to see the inspiring diversity of a montane forest, the Wilson Botanical Area is hard to beat.

Brown-Throated Sloth

The brown-throated sloth (Bradypus variegatus) is one of the most unusual creatures I have ever seen. It is a 3-toed sloth that occurs from Honduras south into the Amazon rain forest. Steve, Michael and I ran into a couple of them last spring while visiting the Osa Peninsula in southern Costa Rica. We were not expecting to see one - in fact we had insects and birds on the mind instead. Fortunately Steve has sharp eyes and we got a great look at this one pictured. It looks like it's playing peek-a-boo.

My search image for insects and birds relies primarily on movement (unless I'm looking for something at close range). I expect that this might be the case for other predators as well (yes I suspect that all entomologists are predators in some sense). That's why sloths can be so hard to see. They hardly move at all. All this individual did during a period of maybe 20 minutes was raise and lower one of its arms. They must be pretty common, though, in certain parts of Central America if we could come across two in less than 12 hours. This individual was right by the main road on the peninsula. And I must say that the road is ideal for seeing wildlife. It isn't paved and is only two lanes wide with forest canopy extending over the top for much of its length. Patient photographers and birders can often be seen off to the side waiting for a good shot or siting.

The down-side of the peninsula is that its hard to find reasonably priced lodging. We ended up hoping to find a side road where we could put out a small tent, but without any luck. In the end we had to pay much more than we could really afford at an ecolodge (several hundred dollars for one night). But the scenery was impressive and the beach was just a bit of a hike away.

Fossil Insects

Over the Christmas break, we had the chance to visit Kathy's sister Linda, her husband Sam (Maestas), and their family. Sam is an amateur paleontologist of the sort that has turned his hobby into his livelihood. He's been telling me for years of his digs and of the interesting dinosaurs and mammals that he has worked with. Growing up in northwestern Colorado he had the opportunity as a teenager to attend a paleontology class given by a local scientist, Les Robinet. Sam was so captivated that he began doing research on his own and volunteered to help with the gentleman in his own digs.



The two became quite close through the years and when Les got too old to manage his small museum and ranch (where many of his fossils were from) he sold them to Sam (my brother-in-law). Since then Sam has worked with a number of scientists and has become very adept at preparing the fossils and has a list of museums around the world that he works with.

Knowing all this, I was a bit surprised when Sam told to me recently that he also had a few fossil insects that had come from a Chinese shipment that he had arranged to prepare. Over the holidays, he invited me over to see a few of his recent pieces that were still in his home. He had a fossil mantis (I think) and a strange fly, although see for yourself. It has strange antennae for a fly. The truth is, I'm not sure what it is. The dragonfly (or damselfly) is also from China. Apparently they're all taken from a level dating back to about 50 million years (to the early Cenozoic Era).

You may run into some of Sam's work in museums around the country. Some of them are also available for sale. You can check out his site on eBay (or you can email Linda directly for more information (lindamaestas@q.com). Somebody who works with insect fossils should get in touch with him.