Is This a Click Beetle?

georgedingwall · Post by **georgedingwall** » Mon Aug 21, 2006 3:41 am

Hi all,

I picked up this beetle this morning, and it made a loud clicking sound as I tried to grab it It also started spinning around very fast and occassionally jumped an inch or so into the air.

It doesn't look like any of the click beetles in my books.

The main image is a 30 frame stack. The inset image is to aid identification.

The beetle is about 10 mm long and is very robust and symetrical.

My setup was ;

Nikon D200 with 105mm Nikon Micro Lens
2 X teleconverter with 2 sets of extension tubes.
1/250 sec @ F8 ISO100
3 flash heads.
Home made focussing rail.
Stack of 30 images with 0.1 mm adjustment between exposures.
Stacked with Helicon Focus 4
Finished in Photoshop CS2.

Wim van Egmond · Post by **Wim van Egmond** » Mon Aug 21, 2006 4:09 am

Hello George,

No, that is not a Click beetle. Could it be an aquatic beetle? Not sure which one but they normally swim under water. But they can fly to find new ponds.

Wim

beetleman · Post by **beetleman** » Mon Aug 21, 2006 8:38 am

I would agree with Wim. Do not know why it was hopping around, but the rear legs do look like swimming legs...need a picture from bottom view. hard to tell from this view. very nice stack also...good job.

georgedingwall · Post by **georgedingwall** » Mon Aug 21, 2006 10:20 am

Hi There,

beetleman wrote:I would agree with Wim. Do not know why it was hopping around, but the rear legs do look like swimming legs...need a picture from bottom view. hard to tell from this view. very nice stack also...good job.

Here is an underside view of the beetle. If it's a swimmer, it was along way from home when I found it. The nearest water is over 100 yards away. Both back legs are there, one of them must have got hooked up out of the way while I was handling it.

Hope this helps with the ID.

Hope this helps.

beetleman · Post by **beetleman** » Mon Aug 21, 2006 11:35 am

I am thinking it is something in this family http://bugguide.net/node/view/9597/bgimage. Take a good look at the leg shots and compare with these pictures. They fly a long ways from water, so don`t let that fool you.

The shape of the body & thorax does not look like a click Beetle at all IMO.

georgedingwall · Post by **georgedingwall** » Mon Aug 21, 2006 12:34 pm

Hi there,

beetleman wrote:I am thinking it is something in this family http://bugguide.net/node/view/9597/bgimage. Take a good look at the leg shots and compare with these pictures. They fly a long ways from water, so don`t let that fool you. The shape of the body & thorax does not look like a click Beetle at all IMO.

Thanks for that link. It does seem to be very similar to the one you mention. I found this one on bugguide which looks almost identical to mine.

http://bugguide.net/node/view/18616/bgimage

The discussion here seems to be either a whiryligig beetle, a water scavenger or a predaceous diving beetle. The behaviour desribed here is similar to what I saw when I found this beetle. What do you think.

I think I can live with just calling it a Water Beetle for now.

I've done a new stack of this beetles head, you can see it at this link;

http://www.photomacrography.net/forum/v ... .php?t=271

It's my biggest stack so far. 100 frames using my new, almost complete, home made fosussing rail.

Bye for now.