To catch a tiger

 

A few weeks ago, Eric's patience paid off with this close-up photo of a Hairy-necked Tiger Beetle (Cicindela hirticollis) at Limantour Beach.  

Tiger beetles can be "flighty" -- as you approach (somewhat like a bird), they'll let you get only-so-close and then they'll take off and fly away, landing not-too-far-away, but far enough away that you have to try again.  But with some practice and some patience and some slowing down, sometimes you can spend some time with them -- appreciating their color patterns, iridescence, hairiness, and interesting behaviors.

Banded!

  

We were in Rohnert Park picking up a burrito tonight (29 June 2024) and noticed several of these long-horned beetles on the outer walls of a building.  I couldn't help saying "Whoa!" out loud when I saw the first one.

The black-and-white coloration with blue tints was eye-popping, but so was the size of this beetle.  Here's one with a standard key for scale:

 

  Meet the Banded Alder Borer (Rosalia funebris)!  

 

 Up close this beetle is even more impressive.  Such beautiful coloration!

 

 

 

I'm curious about those large mandibles.  Although the larvae eat decaying wood, the adults are said to eat nectar and pollen.  Are the mandibles used for jousting?   

Banded Alder Borers are native to western North America, but it appears that they are less common along the coast in this area.

Pale beauty -- Part 2

 

 

Well, it looks like I'm going to run out of time tonight for writing more about Northeastern Beach Tiger Beetles (Habroscelimorpha dorsalis).  But I was able to sort through some photos, so here's a selection of my favorites from yesterday (photos taken on 20 September 2023).

 

Things to look for:

- very long legs

- mostly pale elytra (wing covers)

- bronze/green iridescence (especially on the thorax and legs)

- bright white labrum (the "lip" area)

- white mandibles with black tips 

- gray/purplish eyes (depending on the light and the angle)

We observed these beetles on dry sand (first and last photos), but also on wet sand/mud.  It was fun to see how their pale wing covers made them look like little bits of shell.  [You can click on the images for larger and sharper versions.]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And here's a nice one from Eric:

 

If you'd like to learn more about this species, check out this fact sheet from the Massachusetts Natural Heritage & Endangered Species Program.

 

Pale beauty

 

 

I'll share more about this species soon, but I'm running out of time tonight, so I'll post this photo of Eric's for now...because it's so spectacular!

 

Meet the Northeastern Beach Tiger Beetle (Habroscelimorpha dorsalis, formerly Cicindela dorsalis).

 

Photographed in Chatham, Massachusetts, on 20 September 2023.

  

Tigers along the river

  

We're on our way to Oregon, where Eric will be giving a talk at the Oregon Institute of Marine Biology.  Stopping for a lunch break today (26 October 2022) we ended up on the South Fork of the Eel River near Phillipsville, CA.  

Eric snapped a few quick photos of some beautiful Western Tiger Beetles (Cicindela oregona) along the shoreline.

 

 

 Nicely done, Eric!

Beetle time

  

Earlier in June, I looked down to see this interesting beetle starting to explore my watch!  I suppose you can't tell how large my watch is, but it's still somewhat helpful for scale.  [The watch is about 3 cm (~1 inch) across.]

I think this is a Coyote Brush Leaf Beetle (Trirhabda flavolimbata).  Check out the beautiful metallic green color on the wing covers:

 

 

Beach denizens

  

Eric and I made a quick trip out to the outer beach on Point Reyes yesterday (5 June 2021).  A few fun beach invertebrate highlights included this Red-backed Jumping Spider (Phidippus johnsoni) hanging out in a large piece of driftwood (above), a nice look at some Western Tiger Beetles (Cicindela oregona) along the upper beach near a freshwater seep :

 

 

 

Noticeably abundant amphipods, or beach hoppers, feeding on drift algae washed up along the strand line:

 

 

 

 

And a Pictured Rove Beetle (Thinopinus pictus) feeding on the aforementioned amphipods (!):

 

 

 

Another tiger

Back on 15 August 2020, I posted some photos of Hairy-necked Tiger Beetles (Cicindela hirticollis) from Point Reyes.  Here's another picture from that day:

 

Recently, I was sorting through some photos taken a week earlier (8 August 2020) from the same beach, but the beetles I photographed that day looked different.

Below is an example from 8 August 2020.  Compare the patterning on the wing covers between the beetle above and the beetle below:

 

Did you notice how the first beetle has much more extensive markings?  Each of the areas — the shoulder (closer to the neck), the middle (the marking that looks a bit like a musical eighth note), and the tail end are more robust in the first beetle.  Note especially that along the edge of the wing cover, the middle marking extends both forward and backward creating a line along the margin.

I'm guessing the second beetle is a Western Tiger Beetle (Cicindela oregona).  I don't encounter tiger beetles as often in the Bodega Head area, so I hadn't realized these two species could co-occur.  It's always informative to look closely!

P.S.  Thank you, firefighters, for working so tirelessly in our behalf!

Across the hot sand

It was so hot today that we made our way to the coast for a swim.  On our walk along the beach, there were an impressive number of tiger beetles.  

Some of the beetles were hot, too, as you can see by their behavior — standing on tiptoes to avoid the hot sand:

 

Identifying different tiger beetles means getting a look at the markings on their backs (wing covers).  Note that this species is very well marked — at the shoulder (close to the neck), along the margin, in the middle, and at the tail end.  Here's a beetle on the open sand, and a second feeding along the wrack line:

 

 

We also saw quite a few mated pairs:

 

I haven't been lucky enough to see too many species of tiger beetles in California yet, but I'm going to go ahead and say that I think these are Hairy-necked Tiger Beetles (Cicindela hirticollis).  [If you think otherwise, feel free to let me know!]  Photographed near Drake's Estero on 15 August 2020.

Banded mystery

After finishing field work on 11 January 2020, we were walking up a trail when I saw this large invertebrate crossing the beam of my headlamp (it was ~8 p.m.):

 

It was ~6.5 cm (2.5 inches) long, which is sizable for a terrestrial invertebrate in this area.

I didn't know what it was, so I took a few pictures for the record.  At home, I did some searching on the Internet to try to figure out what it might be, but I didn't have any luck.  It was puzzling that such a striking invertebrate could be so hard to identify.

I thought it might be a beetle larva, but I couldn't find a good match online.  The days went by, but the memory of this mystery critter lingered in the back of my mind.  I tried online searches several more times, but with the same lack of results.  What was it?

Here are close-ups of the head and tail ends:

 

 

Last night I decided to submit a picture to BugGuide.Net to see if someone could help with the identification.  Not too long after, I received a response that it might be a beetle in the Phengodidae family.

I checked it out and it looks like a good match.  More specifically, this is probably a Western Banded Glowworm (Zarhipis integripennis).

I hadn't learned about this species before, but it's a fascinating beetle with a remarkable life history.  A few fun facts:

- Yes, they do glow!  But just not at the tail end (like a firefly), but at each of the segments, so there are luminous green bands along the back.  (Rather than being involved in courtship, the glowing might be defensive, signaling that the glowworms are unpalatable.)

- The adult males look like a fairly typical adult beetle (with very feathery antennae), but the adult females are completely different.  The adult females are "larviform," which means they look just like the larvae.

 - The larvae are voracious millipede predators.  The description of their feeding behavior was almost shocking to me.  It read like a lion attack on the Serengeti.  It's not for the faint of heart!  If you're curious: 

"When a Zarhipis larva discovers a milliped, it races alongside the milliped until it can mount its back...When mounted, the larva throws a coil around the milliped with its last abdominal segments and uses the tenth abdominal segment in an opposable manner to aid its grip.  It then stretches full length to reach for the most vulnerable part of the milliped's exoskeleton — the articulating membrane (where the main nerve is near the surface) between the head and the first body segment on the ventral side.  The larva severs the main nerve with its sickle-shaped mandibles, paralyzing the milliped."  (Tiemann 1967)

The glowworm larva then brings the paralyzed millipede underground, eats the head first and then proceeds to tunnel through the body of the millipede eating all of its soft parts and leaving only the hard exoskeleton behind.

We've seen lots of millipedes along the trail we were walking, but I had no idea they are sometimes being chased by glowworm larvae!

P.S.  If you're intrigued (and brave enough!), you can read more and see photos of these glowworms — glowing, attacking, feeding, mating, egg-laying, and more — in this paper:  Tiemann, D. L.  1967.  Observations on the natural history of the Western Banded Glowworm Zarhipis integripennis (Le Conte) (Coleoptera: Phengodidae).  Proceedings of the California Academy of Sciences XXXV: 235-264.

Pattern in the sand -- Part 2

Okay, remember the mystery tracks that I posted last night?  I'll reveal the animal that made them in the photo below this one:

 

We followed the tracks until we got to the end, and this is what we found:

 

A rain beetle (Pleocoma sp.)!  It makes sense, because this was 24 November 2018 and it had rained the two days prior to this.  But I'm not sure how often these beetles are seen at the beach?  (We noticed several that night.)

Here's the beetle in Eric's hands. This is a pretty large beetle, but the width of the tracks in the sand is due to the reach of the beetle's legs:

 

An even closer view showing the wonderful antennae:

 

I wrote about rain beetles back in October of 2013 (when I was at a meeting at ~6000 feet elevation).  If you'd like to learn more about these intriguing beetles, check out the post called "Triggered by rain (or snow!)".

And here are more of its beautiful tracks:

 

Picture this

 

You're a beach hopper, foraging on kelp washed up on the beach.  It's nighttime, so it's dark, and out of nowhere, you're seized from behind by a giant pair of sickled-shaped mandibles.  You've fallen prey to a Pictured Rove Beetle (Thinopinus pictus).

Here's a close-up of a similar scene:

 

In the previous photo, the Pictured Rove Beetle is holding onto the beach hopper with its curved brown mandibles.  Although it's a little confusing because they blend together, the beach hopper is recognizable by its blue antennae and legs.

Pictured Rove Beetles live on sandy beaches along the Pacific Coast.  They burrow below the sand during the day, then emerge at night to hunt for beach hoppers and other prey.  They prefer wet sand and move up and down the beach with spring and neap tides.

This is the same beetle viewed from above.  Note that these adult beetles are wingless.

 

While we were watching this beetle on Salmon Creek Beach, a second individual emerged with a slightly different color pattern: 

 

If you're wondering, Pictured Rove Beetles are ~2 cm long...not so large that you have to worry about them mistaking one of your toes for a beach hopper!

P.S.  Many thanks to Eric for spotting these beetles and to Peter Connors for first introducing me to these voracious burrowing predators.

Cast ashore

On 9 March 2014, there was an interesting mix of animals washed up in the wrack line on Salmon Creek Beach.  The waves were about 5-6 feet, so some offshore animals were being pushed up onto the sand.  But next to them, and even more abundant, was a diversity of insects.

It's a little odd to see a pelagic animal like a siphonophore next to a terrestrial treehopper!

 

Here's a better picture of one of the siphonophore swimming bells.  This was a relatively large bell, ~3-3.5 cm long.

 

(For more about siphonophores, review a post from last April.)

Many of the treehoppers we observed were still alive.  One hopped onto Eric's sweatshirt:

 

I don't have much experience identifying treehoppers, but I gave this one a try.  My first guess is a Three-cornered Alfalfa Hopper (Spissistilus festinus).  If you can confirm or correct this identification, please do!

Ladybird beetles and winged ants were also common:

 

 

A variety of other insects were represented in lesser numbers.  An example is this click beetle (elaterid) that was crawling actively across the sand:

 

 

Last June I wrote about encountering lots of insects in the wrack line on Salmon Creek  Beach.  At that time I wondered if it had to do with warm weather, strong winds, and large waves.  This time there was warm weather (on 8 March) and relatively large waves (on 9 March), but I wouldn't say there were strong winds.  Perhaps the warm weather was enough to cause some of these animals to disperse, but they went a little too far and got caught out at sea and then washed back to shore with the larger waves?

Interestingly, during both events (March 2014 and June 2013) I noted treehoppers and ladybird beetles, but it appears that different species were associated with the two events.  Click here to compare the species from 2 June 2013.

Two different visitors

Last night there were two visitors waiting for us when we got home.  We walked into the kitchen and were a little surprised to look up at the ceiling to see one of these:

 

We moved this scorpion to an outdoor railing for a photo, and then released it onto a nearby log.  It quickly crawled underneath a loose piece of bark.

 

For more about California Forest Scorpions (Uroctonus mordax), see the post from 13 March 2012.

When photographing the scorpion, we also noticed this small, shiny, metallic beetle.  It was only ~7 mm long.

 

I wish I knew the identify of this beetle.  Here are two more views.  If you're familiar with it, let me know!

 

 

Triggered by rain (or snow!)

 

I'm at a meeting in southern California this week, near Idyllwild which is close to 6,000 feet elevation.  It rained for most of the day and then started snowing around 5 p.m.  The photo above and the one below were taken looking up into the night sky.

 

Earlier in the day, when it started to rain, one of my colleagues found a very interesting beetle and kindly shared it with the rest of the group (Thanks, Paul!).  Upon seeing it, other people mentioned they had just encountered similar-looking beetles flying by.

These beetles are commonly known as "rain beetles" because they emerge with the first fall rain or snow.  They're in the genus Pleocoma.

They look a lot like June Beetles, but note the enlarged and spiny or rake-like front legs; the forked "horn" on the front of the head; the long and dense hairs on the underside; and how the antennal clubs are divided into distinct segments.  All of these features are visible in the next two pictures.  (And keep in mind that it's not June!)

 

 

These beetles have a fascinating life history.  The larvae live below ground for a long time — up to 13 years!  They emerge as adults for a brief time only when the conditions are right (the adults don't feed).  The males fly around searching for females, but the females are flightless and are waiting for the males in burrows (hence the broad antennae of the males for detecting the scent of a female and the mole-like front legs for digging).

There's a lot more about these beetles that kept me saying, "Wow!"  You can read more about them here.