Royal strip of purple glow along the edge of this lovely Ground Beetle (Carabus serratus) from Pennsylvania. Photograph by Dorcas Ogunbanwo. Beetle by Hannah Stout
A Scarites subterraneus larva I found a while ago. Identifying them was weirdly difficult at first. They apparently have a taste for mealworms so I put them in my cup of them for it to have a lunch…
Found out the hard way that mealworms also have a taste for Scarites
these guys are pretty unusual among beetle grubs in that they hunt visually, watching for movement with four beady eyes before bursting out of their burrow to grab passing prey. They can’t seem to tell the difference between a bug and a blade of grass though.
tiger beetle larvae don‘t normally leave their burrows, but if you dig them up they curl up, brace their head against their butt and snap open to jump away. Another species, the endangered Habroscelimorpha dorsalis, lives on beaches and escapes from parasitoid wasps by curling into a wheel and rolling away on the wind.
Just going through some of my pitfall trap photos from the spring and realized I never posted a shot of this cool ground beetle that kept showing up, red-headed ground beetle (Amphasia interstitialis).