Thursday, May 15, 2008

Why AZ is pretty rad: Chrysina gloriosa


I still remember when I saw my first Chrysina gloriosa 4 years ago, the iridescent green and silver orb clunked into my black-light, confused and disoriented. It made me wonder, what evolutionary forces resulted in such brilliant metallic coloration on a beetle that is mostly active only at night. Last year during the monsoons, these beetles were at times, the most common scarabs to come to my black light.

2 comments:

Al Allen said...

If your interested to exchange Coleoptera including tenebs contact Al Allen Headrush3@msn.com.

Anonymous said...

Hi Kojun-- found your blog via Alex's.

Holy crap! That's a lot of Chrysina. The last time I went blacklighting in AZ (okay, 7 years ago) we went out looking for those but only found 2 or 3. It was right before a monsoon, though, so maybe they weren't out in force yet.