The thing about entomology is, there are always weirder bugs than anything you could imagine on your own.
Here's Cysteodemus wislizeni, a blister beetle from west Texas.
#Meloidae #Insects #Beetles
I decided to go back and see if I could find that beetle again and get more pictures, and I did!! While these beetles have potent chemical defenses in the form of caustic oil they secrete, this one was quite placid and let me get up close with the clip-on phone lenses, even crawling onto my hand at one point.
The mite mostly stayed under the beetle's chin, but occasionally ran around its head.
A passerby asked what I was looking at and I am afraid I was not the best or most observant conversationalist, as I was busy taking all the pictures I could get, but he seemed familiar with the concept of phoretic mites at least, and remarked that perhaps the mites gained some benefit or protection from the beetle's secretions.
This BugGuide observation <https://bugguide.net/node/view/31709> seems similar?
#DailyMitePic #Mitestodon #mites #bugstodon #insects #beetles • #Acari #Parasitiformes #Mesostigmata #Coleoptera #Meloidae
The best thing I saw today. On and around Hawk Hill, the low hill near the café, several beautiful large _Meloe_ oil beetles were voraciously eating green vegetation. These were a prize all on their own and I took pictures of all of them. Later, at the café, I was going over the photos when I noticed one of them had something on its face!! A phoretic mesostigmatid mite!!!!!
#DailyMitePic #Mitestodon #mites #bugstodon #insects #beetles • #Acari #Parasitiformes #Mesostigmata #Coleoptera #Meloidae
The inflated beetle, Cysteodemus, is one of the most recognizeable insects of the southwestern deserts. Larvae are parasites of soil-nesting bees. Anza Borrego, California.
It's kind of difficult to describe from a still photograph, but when this desert blister beetle (Pleuropasta sp.) walks forward, it looks *exactly* like a red harvester ant dragging a large seed backwards. It's a really tremendous mimic.
Photographed in Anza Borrego.
Blister beetles in the genus Nemognatha have elongated mouthparts for sipping nectar. This individual was photographed in a basket flower at #UTAustin’s Stengl Lost Pines Biological Station in Texas.
Nap ízeltlábúja - Arthropod of
Alex Wild
José-Manuel Benito Álvarez
neville park