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Showing posts with label Coleoptera. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Coleoptera. Show all posts

Friday 3 August 2018

Tiger Beetle - Calomera littoralis winkleri (Mandl, 1934) - Cyprus


Calomera is a genus of ground beetles native to the Palearctic, the Near East and northern Africa.
Family: Carabidae

Photos  and video Alyki Akrotiriou , by George Konstantinou


Monday 30 April 2018

Gyrinus dejeani - Cyprus


Gyrinus is a genus of small aquatic whirligig beetles in the family Gyrinidae native to the Palearctic (including Europe), the Near East, the Nearctic and North Africa.

Photo and video Paphos by George Konstantinou









Friday 16 February 2018

Lesser searcher beetle or caterpillar-hunter - Calosoma inquisitor (Linnaeus, 1758) - Cyprus



Family: Carabidae

Calosoma inquisitor (the lesser searcher beetle or caterpillar-hunter) is a species of ground beetle. The species is found in northern Africa, Europe (northward to southern Scandinavia) and East to Asia Minor, Iran and the Caucasus, with isolated populations in eastern Siberia and Japan.

The imagines are predatory on various insects and their larvae, especially, feed on Lepidoptera larvae. They can fly well and are found not only on the ground, but also in bushes and on trees. In case of danger the beetle can fall and then threaten by lifting up the front body and spreading the mandibles. The females lay about 50 eggs. The hatching larvae are also predatory and develop very quickly. They're in the ground. The beetles emerge in June, but still linger in a diapause until next spring in the ground.
From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calosoma_inquisitor

Photos Pomos 10/2/2018 by George Konstantinou




Saturday 10 February 2018

Dermestes intermedius Kalík, 1951 - Cyprus


Dermestes is a genus of beetles in the family Dermestidae, the skin beetles. The genus is distributed worldwide.

The larvae of these beetles feed on dead and dried animal material, including dead bodies, dried meat and fish, and body parts such as bone, hair, skin, and feathers. They are cannibalistic on occasion. They are pests of museums, where they feed on specimens such as dried insects and stuffed animals. They may be useful in museum settings as well, where they are used to clean tissue from skeletons. Some species may play a role in forensic entomology when they are found on human corpses.
As of 2013 there are about 92 species
From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dermestes

Photos Athienou 9/2/2018 by George Konstantinou




Saturday 20 January 2018

Alfalfa weevil - Hypera postica (Gyllenhal, 1813) - Cyprus


Hypera postica, commonly known as the alfalfa weevil, is a species of beetle in the superfamily Curculionoidea; it can be found in alfalfa fields throughout Europe. Considered a destructive threat to alfalfa production in North America, several accidental introductions have been successfully countered though the use of a variety of biological control species.

The alfalfa weevil grows to a length of about 4 to 5.5 mm (0.16 to 0.22 in). The rostrum or beak is short and broad. The frons is half as wide as the rostrum while the pronotum is broadest in the centre. The general colour of the insect is brown, with a dark mid-dorsal stripe. The larva has a distinctive black head and no legs; it is yellowish-green, with a white dorsal stripe and faint white lateral stripes. It is about 1 cm (0.4 in) long just before pupation. It pupates in a white, pea-sized cocoon made of loosely-woven silk. It resembles the clover leaf weevil (Hypera punctata), but that species is nearly twice as large, the larvae have tan heads and they seldom cause much damage to alfalfa crops

In Illinois, some eggs are laid in the late fall or the winter, when weather conditions permit. Adults also overwinter and become increasingly active in March and April. Eggs are laid in batches of up to 25 inside alfalfa stems. The larvae feed for three or four weeks, moulting three times, before pupating in the cocoons they make. They emerge as adults in about one or two weeks. After feeding for a week or two, these may become quiescent during the remainder of the summer. In fall, the adults hide in the crowns of alfalfa plants or move onto coarse vegetation in ditches or by fences or in nearby woodland

Both the larvae and the adults are diurnal and feed on the foliage of alfalfa, the larvae doing the most damage. The adults eat the edges of the leaves, giving them a feathery appearance. At first, the larvae feed on terminal leaves leaving puncture marks, but they later move down the plant to feed on lower leaves. The leaves attacked are skeletonised as the larvae feed between the veins, and plant yields can be reduced by up to 15%. Sometimes the larvae are killed by the pathogenic fungus Zoophthora phytonomi, especially in warm and humid weather. They may also be parasitized by ichneumon wasps, Bathylplectes anurus and B. curculionis. The female of these wasps is only about 0.125 in (0.32 cm) long, and lays an egg inside an early stage of the larva of the weevil. The developing wasp larva is a parasitoid, living inside the weevil larva and devouring it, eventually pupating soon after its host. The wasp's brownish cocoon has a broad white band in the case of B. curculionis, and a narrower, raised one in the case of B. anurus. When it is disturbed, the cocoon of the latter species can "jump" several centimetres to avoid predation.[2][4] Both these species of wasp have been investigated for their potential for biological control of the weevil, and B. anurus is generally considered superior to B. curculionis because of its higher reproductive rate
From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypera_postica

Many thanks to Filippos Georgiades  to find the species. 

Photos Nicosia 20/1/2018 by George Konstantinou




Sunday 24 December 2017

Onitis alexis ssp. septentrionalis BALTHASAR, 1942 - Dung beetle - Cyprus

Family: Scarabaeidae

Subfamily: Scarabaeinae













Distribution 
Africa and the Mediterranean. Onitis alexis is broadly distributed from Spain and Syria, southward to South Africa. It is, however, largely absent from the heavily forested areas of western Africa (Krikken, 1977).



Life history
This species inhabits savannahs, grasslands, and pastures where they are most active at dusk and dawn. Adults show a preference for the dung of large herbivorous mammals. The species is recorded feeding on elephant, cattle, and buffalo droppings (Krikken, 1977). Male-female pairs dig a dung-lined tunnel under a dung source to an average depth of 17 cm (6.7 in). The burrow is then stocked with 150–200 grams of dung, which is made into multiple sausage-like shapes. One to four eggs are deposited into each dung-sausage (Edwards and Aschenborn, 1987). The egg to adult lifecycle can be completed in as little as two months in the summer, but it may require over a year if conditions are poor. In good habitat, there can be several generations per year (Tyndale-Biscoe, 1990). Larvae cannot survive cool, wet winters (Tyndale-Biscoe, 2006).

Photos at Akrotiri, 17. June. 2016, by Michael Hadjiconstantis. 




Monday 8 May 2017

Calosoma (Campalita) auropunctatum (Herbst, 1784) - Cyprus



Family: Carabidae

Calosoma auropunctatum, is a species of ground beetle. This species was previously classified as Calosome maderae ssp. auropunctatum. This species is found from Europe (except in western and southwestern parts) eastward to Anatolia, Central Asia and western China and Mongolia
From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calosoma_auropunctatum

Photos Alampra 8/5/2017 by George Konstantinou 



Friday 14 April 2017

Ehrenbergi's Jewel Beetle - Julodis ehrenbergii Laporte, 1835 - Cyprus


 This jewel beetle, with more than 20mm length, is green-golden, with yellow hair. Elytrae are spotted with 4 longitudinal rows of yellow and hairy spots. Legs are spotted, copperish, and hairy. Antennae are black.

Biology: The host plants are roots of various plants.

Distribution: South East Europe (Balkans), Turkey, Cyprus, Iraq, Iran, Syria, Israel/Palestine, Egypt.

Julodis is a genus of beetles in the family Buprestidae.

From http://naturewonders.org/picture?/1282

Photos Cape Greco 14/4/2017 by George Konstantinou 






Thursday 19 January 2017

Tenebrio obscurus Fabricius, 1792 - The dark mealworm - Cyprus

Family: Tenebrionidae

Tenebrio obscurus, or the dark mealworm, is a species of darkling beetle. The larvae, when used as feeder insects for reptile and amphibian pets, are known as mini mealworms. These insects should not be confused with younger mealworms (Tenebrio molitor) or with the confused flour beetle (Tribolium confusum), which is also occasionally used as a reptile feeder insect.

Mini mealworms would probably remain largely unknown, if not for the reptile pet industry. In the search for easy to raise insects to use as food for captive reptiles and amphibians, mini mealworms have recently attracted interest as an ideal food item for smaller species.

The larvae resemble very small mealworms, about ½ to ¾ inch (12 to 19 mm) in size. Once they reach adult size, the larvae pupate, and later emerge as small, black beetles. From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tenebrio_obscurus 

In Cyprus this species is often found in old poultry farms and it's nocturnal.

Photos at Rizokarpaso 5/5/2016, by Michael Hadjiconstantis




Wednesday 28 September 2016

Icosium tomentosum ssp. atticum Ganglbauer, 1882 - Longhorn beetle - Cyprus

Family: Cerambycidae 

Εξάπλωση: Μεσόγειος: το υποείδος Icosium tomentosum ssp. tomentosum εξαπλώνετε από την Βόρεια Αφρική και την Ιβηρική Χερσόνησο στη δυτική Ιταλία. Ενώ το I. tomentosum atticum είναι μάλλον διαδεδομένο σε όλη την Ανατολική Μεσόγειο, από την ανατολική Ιταλία και τη Μάλτα στην Συρία, την Ιορδανία και το Ισραήλ. Ένας απομονωμένος πληθυσμός είναι γνωστός από τη Νότια Γαλλία. 

Πληροφορίες: Οι προνύμφες του αναπτύσσονται σε νεκρό ξύλο ειδών της οικογενείας Cupressaceae: Cupressus sp, Callitris propinqua, Tetraclinis articulata και Juniperus oxycedrus (Gianfranco Sama et al., 2010). Μέγεθος 9-14mm , τα ενήλικα πετούν από Ιούνιο μέχρι Ιούλιο (www.catalogueoflife.org).

English text
Distribution: Mediterranean: the subspecies Icosium tomentosum ssp. tomentosum is spread from North Africa and the Iberian Peninsula to western Italy. While I. tomentosum atticum is rather widespread throughout the eastern Mediterranean, from the eastern Italy and Malta to Syria, Jordan and Israel. An isolated population is known from southern France.

Information: The larvae of the species feed on dead wood of Cupressaceae family: Cupressus sp, Callitris propinqua, Tetraclinis articulata and Juniperus oxycedrus (Gianfranco Sama et al., 2010). Size 9-14mm, the adults fly from June to July (www.catalogueoflife.org).

Photos  at Akrotiri 18/8/2015 and Agios Ilarion 12/7/2016, by George Konstantinou and Michael Hadjiconstantis.