Rhipicera (Agathorhipis) femorata

3 Feather-horned beetle at Weetangera, ACT

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Identification history

	Rhipicera (Agathorhipis) femorata	10 Mar 2019	michaelb
	Rhipicera (Agathorhipis) femorata	10 Mar 2019	Harrisi

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4 comments

MattM wrote:

10 Mar 2019

I saw a similar beetle flying at Kama yesterday. Unfortunately it didn't stop long enough for a photo, and it was too high to see any spots. Are they particularly uncommon, and are there many species?

michaelb wrote:

10 Mar 2019

Looking at the ALA reference it seems they are not too rare:
https://bie.ala.org.au/species/urn:lsid:biodiversity.org.au:afd.taxon:93015953-bb2e-47e7-bd80-47f529ad41c6
They list 5 species of Rhipicera (Agathorhipis):
https://bie.ala.org.au/species/urn:lsid:biodiversity.org.au:afd.taxon:45a42abb-2dc1-4cfb-9dfc-a9cc2a925661#classification
and one species of Rhipicera (Oligorhipis):
https://bie.ala.org.au/species/urn:lsid:biodiversity.org.au:afd.taxon:547f1da5-4a20-4f19-9743-f175d6c5a001#classification

MattM wrote:

10 Mar 2019

OK then. I saw it had the "rare or uncommon native" status here so I thought I would check.

KimPullen wrote:

22 Apr 2019

Rhipicera femorata is one of those species that you may not come across frequently, but when you do there may be dozens or even hundreds of them. But they are generally all males; the females seem very scarce (or maybe just good at hiding). Some other Australian species of Rhipiceridae do seem to be genuinely rare.

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