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.

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:

 

 

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.

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.

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!