Interesting stuff from Laredo, TX

[Doug Yanega]

> Two beetles (black and
>squatty, about 2.5 cm long) were attached to a small sphere - with a 3 cm
>diameter - made of what looked like dried dirt. [snip]
> I'm assuming the sphere was
>some sort of egg case?

As Anne already mentioned, these were dung beetles rolling a little dung
ball which they would eventually lay an egg in. In addition to reverence by
the Egyptians (my understanding was that it was a matter of being a
metaphor for the sun going across the sky and/or rebirth), one early
taxonomist linked them to Greek mythology by naming one genus "Sisyphus",
after the mythological person condemned to forever roll a boulder up a hill
in the afterlife.

>I found another similar
>beetle close by, and picked it up - only to be blasted by an offensive odor.
>I suppose these beetles are just another in the family of "stink bugs",
>although they were new to me.

Sounds like a tenebrionid, maybe Eleodes.

>I also saw a few impressive larvae, one which I know I've seen before but
>didn't have a field guide handy.  It was large (over 5 cm) and red with long
>tentacle-like appendages.

Could it have been a _Battus_ larva? But I'd suppose you'd recognize one?

Peace,


Doug Yanega       Dept. of Entomology           Entomology Research Museum
Univ. of California - Riverside, Riverside, CA 92521
phone: (909) 787-4315
                  http://www.icb.ufmg.br/~dyanega/
  "There are some enterprises in which a careful disorderliness
        is the true method" - Herman Melville, Moby Dick, Chap. 82