Scarab:

Paracotalpa Granicollis

One of my pastimes when I am not busy looking at jobs, picking up, planting, trimming or removing trees, is collecting beetles. I am interested in all beetles, but enjoy the Buprestids (jewel beetles), Cerambycids (longhorn beetles), Cicindelids (tiger beetles), and Scarab beetles the best. Perhaps this is because they are families of beetles that friends of mine like Ted MacRae (author of Beetles in the Bush – see link at right), Fred Skillman, and Bill Warner are interested in.

I have been working on inventorying the beetles at the Hassayampa River Preserve since we moved to Wickenburg and I obtained permission to collect there. Methods used include pitfall traps, flight intercept traps, collecting & rearing infested wood, using mercury vapor and ultraviolet lights at night, and simply searching for beetles during the day. I have a good list started but have a long way to go before I will be ready to publish any papers.

This year I have been focusing on a new area – Nothing, AZ. So far there has not been too much activity there, but it has lived up to more than its name! I am using the same methods as I have used at the Hassayampa River Preserve, and hope to have similar results.

In this post I wanted to provide a link to an article of mine, coauthored with Mary Liza Jameson, that was published in the Coleopterists’ Bulletin. It is about my discovery of a certain species of scarab beetle (Paracotalpa granicollis) in New Mexico – an area where they had not been recorded before. You can find the article at: http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/entomologypapers/146

Here is one of the photos of one of the beetles that I took for the article: