So my first new beetle of the year is in fact one that I found in August 2017 at Holme Dunes in Norfolk. It's been sat in my fridge since then waiting for me to get round to dissecting it.
I ran it through the keys in Duff's Beetles of Britain and Ireland volume one at the time and it came out as Choleva fagiezi. However, having never seen a Choleva before I wasn't 100% convinced that I'd got it right. The main differences are in a bit of the hind leg called the trochanter.
Luckily the specimen was a male, so I dissected out the aedagus and compared it against the illustrations in Duff and lo and behold got a match with fagniezi.
But look at the image below. The most striking thing is the size of its 'equipment' in relation to its body size. This beetle must be more than half genitals!!
I've no idea what the reason for this massive appendage is but it sure is impressive.
I can't find much out about this genus except that they appear to be associated with mammal nests and presumably feed on the associated decaying material. Although this individual was found on coastal sand dunes.
There don't appear to be too many records for Choleva fagniezi and apparently there are only seven modern records for Norfolk.
So not a bad record to start 2019's beetling.
No comments:
Post a Comment