United States or Kenya ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
My booty comprises two species of Lamellicorns: Anoxia villosa and Euchlora Julii, both of whom I find in the perfect state, usually dead, but sometimes alive. I obtain a few of their nymphs, a great piece of luck, for the larval skin which accompanies them will serve me as a standard of comparison. I come upon plenty of larvae, of all ages.
In Coleoptera I made large collections, but the extensive families of the Elateridae, Lamellicorns, and others are still uncatalogued, and very many species remain to be described. The only beetles that have been catalogued as yet with sufficient completeness to warrant any general conclusions are the Longicorns. I collected about 300 different species, and Mr.
These horns, in the great family of the Lamellicorns, resemble those of various quadrupeds, such as stags, rhinoceroses, etc., and are wonderful both from their size and diversified shapes. Instead of describing them, I have given figures of the males and females of some of the more remarkable forms.
These larvæ are blind, soft, fleshy, yellowish white, covered with a fine down visible only under the lens, curved into a fish-hook like the larvæ of the Lamellicorns, to which they bear a certain resemblance in their general configuration. The segments, including the head, number thirteen, of which nine are provided with breathing-holes with a pale, oval rim.
If the male is removed the female ceases all work, and as M. Brulerie believes, would remain on the same spot until she died. 'Ann. Soc. Entomolog. Chiasognathus Grantii, reduced. The great mandibles of the male Lucanidae are extremely variable both in size and structure, and in this respect resemble the horns on the head and thorax of many male Lamellicorns and Staphylinidae.
In Lethrus, moreover, a beetle belonging to the same great division of the Lamellicorns, the males are known to fight, but are not provided with horns, though their mandibles are much larger than those of the female.
In the presence of this underground game, so greatly varied in size and shape and yet so judiciously selected to facilitate paralysis, I do not hesitate to generalize and I accept, as the ration of the other Scoliae, larvae of Lamellicorns whose species will be determined by future observation.
Perhaps she even assails other larvae, inhabitants, like the foregoing, of heaps of rotting vegetable-matter. I therefore set down the Cetonia genus generally as forming the prey of the Two-banded Scolia. Oryctes, Cetoniae and Anoxiae in the larval state: here then is the prey of the three Scoliae whose habits we know. The three Beetles are Lamellicorns, Scarabaeidae.
I will specify the few other cases in which I have heard of a difference in colour between the sexes of beetles. These two latter beetles belong to the family of Longicorns. Messrs. R. Trimen and Waterhouse, jun., inform me of two Lamellicorns, viz., a Peritrichia and Trichius, the male of the latter being more obscurely coloured than the female.
Sexual selection, which implies the possession of considerable perceptive powers and of strong passions, seems to have been more effective with the Lamellicorns than with any other family of beetles.
Word Of The Day