Beach Lucanid?

During our trip up the coast, we stumbled upon a really interesting Lucanid at one of the beaches we visited. This is Platyceropsis keeni. My friend and I had been hunting for this creature for a couple of days. This curious "stag" beetle is known to occur along the coast of Northern California all the way up to British Columbia under driftwood during the Spring months. We had visited a couple beaches in Northern California, each with lots of driftwood along the coast and flipped over hundred of logs but were not successful in finding any. We then headed into Oregon and pulled off at a nice looking beach south of Gold Beach. After flipping over a couple logs, we finally found a dead one. We dashed out to the coast and started flipping over every piece of driftwood we could find but could not find any live specimens... were we too late?

After a while, I had gotten bored/given up and headed to the valley behind the first row of dunes to look for Tenebrionids in the drier sand. Here I found a nice pile of drier driftwood and started flipping them over to find Phaleromella, a Teneb I hadn't encountered before. Then I saw this guy. A live Platyceropsis keeni digging through the sand! Elated, I flipped over more logs and found a couple more, and also the larvae, which interestingly seems to live in the sand right under driftwood as well. In another patch of driftwood in this area behind the first row of dunes, we found more live adults. While its hard to speculate from just one collecting event, it was interesting that all our effort flipping logs right on the coast resulted in zero specimens, while they were fairly common in this particular microhabitat.

Weird Teneb 2

This next "weird" teneb is actually quite common in California but I hadn't collected it until this trip.
This is Anepsius delicatulatus, a tiny Teneb around 2.5mm long. Like many Tenebs, this little critter crawls around on the ground in evenings and nights feeding on detritus. It is actually in the same tribe as Weird Teneb # 1. I found these out in Inyo County in a small county-run camp. These guys are around all year but seem to be most active in the late spring months. They prefer soft sandy ground and sometimes can even be found on aeolian sand dunes.

Weird Teneb

So I've just returned from a month long collecting trip through California and Oregon. The weather did not always cooperate but collecting was still pretty awesome. The very first day of the trip, we stayed in a random campsite off the I-10 outside of Los Angeles in Cherry Valley. It was rainy and hailing and absolutely miserable but the Tenebs were still out. Found the usual California genera, Coniontis, Coelocnemis, Nyctoporis, but then my friend found something you don't see every day. While combing through a nest of Liometopum, he pulled out two of these guys.
This is Anchomma costatum. One of the few Tenebs in the US that has 4-4-4 tarsi instead of 5-5-4. It was originally described as a Colydiid, then placed with the Stenosini in Tenebrionidae, and now rests in Anepsiini. While it was found in an ant nest, it is probably not obligate upon the ant and instead, like many Tenebs, probably feeds on the ant's refuse.

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.

Sometimes we all make mistakes!

Last summer was the first time I experienced a true Southern Arizona monsoon. The rains brought out all sorts of Tenebs I've never seen alive. The plants were green, flowers were blooming, and love was in the air. All sorts of bugs that I had never seen alive were out including bunches of Asidines (the non smelly desert tanks). Below is a photo of a normal mating pair of Philolithus morbillosus.

This pair was one of hundreds of this species that had aggregated in a grassy parking lot. Apparently the males are quite depraved as the next photo illustrates.
The male (on top), in a hurry to copulate, did not realize that the female (who was frantically trying to run away) was of a completely different species. The bottom species is Parasida lirata. This male was not alone, a number of other odd couplings like this were observed, and some were succeeding in copulating. Would have been quite interesting to see if any viable young were produced but alas I didn't keep any... Perhaps this coming monsoon I'll grab some.

Local Bugs

As I was walking to the lab today, I saw a small beetle running around on the concrete. I remember in Ithaca, that all the beetles I found running around on campus tended to be Carabids (mostly Amara or Pterostichus). Not in Tucson though. The small beetle was a Tenebrionid in the genus, Blapstinus. These beetles are fairly common in the SW and are characterized by having their eyes completely divided by extensions of the side of their face.

This particular beast is the third species I've encountered in the lawns around my lab.

Mystery P-toid

A couple days ago I noticed that one of the beetles I had brought back from the Imperial dunes wasn't looking too healthy. Thinking that it was just reaching the end of its life due to natural causes, I stuck him in a kill jar. When I took him out to pin today, this is what I saw.

Unfortunately the larvae, which I think is a Tachnid, was already dead. This beetle, Eusattus dilitatus, spends almost its entire life underground. In fact, the only specimens I've seen above ground were those that had already perished. They live among the roots of various plants in the Imperial dunes. Check out some cool action shots of this beetle here.
This raises some interesting questions. Do the adult flies just wait for one of the beetles to sporadically surface? Do the adults lay eggs at the base of plants and early instar larvae then somehow search out suitable hosts?
The larvae itself is big, relative to its host size. Imagine living with something that big wriggling around in you!