beetle

Pizzazz · Post by **Pizzazz** » Sun Aug 23, 2015 11:57 am

Hi Gang!

Came home from a recent vacation and found a very well preserved
beetle under one of our end tables.

This is a horned passalus, I believe.

This shot is the detail of the lower left front leg. Talk about armor!

Taken with the Nikon Macro-Nikkor 65mm lens attached to a
Nikon PB-6 bellows at approx. 150mm bellows extension.

Mike

rjlittlefield · Post by **rjlittlefield** » Sun Aug 23, 2015 12:12 pm

Very nice!

These things have a distinctive head, right? Any chance of shooting that for us?

--Rik

Pizzazz · Post by **Pizzazz** » Sun Aug 23, 2015 12:48 pm

Hi Rik!!!

Working on a 143 shot stack now. This was the 4th attempt at the
leg as I just did not like my results, AND the specimen needed constant
cleaning (and still does) as that pesky micro dust particulate matter
can get in the way!

I hope to post in a while.

Mike

Pizzazz · Post by **Pizzazz** » Sun Aug 23, 2015 1:58 pm

Gang

Here is a head shot.

Mike

rjlittlefield · Post by **rjlittlefield** » Sun Aug 23, 2015 4:45 pm

Nicely shot, and indeed very interesting!

But now I'm wondering about the ID. The other pictures that I see labeled "horned passalus" seem to show a single large forward-pointing horn, instead of two large backward-pointing horns. The antennae also look much different.

See for example http://entnemdept.ufl.edu/creatures/mis ... ssalus.htm (scroll down to "A single, curved horn points forward on top of the head and between the eyes") or the several pages of images at BugGuide.

Can you show us a picture of the whole beast?

--Rik

Pizzazz · Post by **Pizzazz** » Sun Aug 23, 2015 5:13 pm

Rik

I will need to shoot this and do a whole body shot. I will not be able to do it
until tomorrow.

I am sure I probably misread the data that I thought identified this.

More tomorrow

Mike

rjlittlefield · Post by **rjlittlefield** » Sun Aug 23, 2015 5:57 pm

No hurries, of course. I'll just be curious to see what the whole of this beast looks like. At the moment (after much searching!) I would place a modest bet on the "Triceratops Beetle", http://bugguide.net/node/view/4705/bgimage. It's the only thing I can find that matches up with what I can see in these images so far. But still there are some structural aspects that I'm not completely comfortable with.

--Rik

Pizzazz · Post by **Pizzazz** » Mon Aug 24, 2015 5:38 pm

Full body shot

rjlittlefield · Post by **rjlittlefield** » Mon Aug 24, 2015 6:06 pm

Thanks, Mike. This makes me comfortable with "Triceratops Beetle", Phileurus truncatus. I was a bit concerned with the shape of the front of the prothorax in the earlier shot, but the rest of the beast seems completely consistent with P. truncatus and the prothorax seems within normal variation shown in BugGuide. The horns on the head are distinctive and don't match anything else I can find. Phileurus is a tiny genus, only two species in your area and the other one doesn't look like this.

I would be interested to know what reference you used to ID this beast as a Horned Passalus. But offhand I can easily understand the confusion. There aren't a lot of beetles that have horns at all, and while the structures of the horns are much different, the two species look very similar in photos that are not good enough to make those clear.

--Rik

Pizzazz · Post by **Pizzazz** » Tue Aug 25, 2015 3:16 am

Hi Rik

Thanks for the thread. Next time I will take more time to verify the
subject.

I do like how well the specimen is preserved and I hope to get more shots
of it from different perspectives.

It is a cool beetle. What is really neat, a live specimen, when
holding one is quite strong when they walk. The legs are quite
powerful.

Mike