Anoplognathus porosus

6 Porosus Christmas beetle at Mount Ainslie

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Identification history

	Anoplognathus porosus	13 Jan 2024	HaukeKoch
	Anoplognathus brunnipennis	13 Jan 2024	Pirom

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Significant sighting

HaukeKoch noted:

15 Jan 2024

As far as I am aware, this is the first image documenting a pyrgotid fly (likely Maenomenus ensifer) in the act of parasitizing a Christmas Beetle.

User's notes

Christmas beetle with lurking (scarab?) fly

5 comments

AlisonMilton wrote:

13 Jan 2024

@pirom Don't think this is a Green-tailed but the fly looks very interesting. Hope you posted it separately.

Pirom wrote:

13 Jan 2024

I’ll post the fly - been unable to ID. These beetles were with other individuals, more clearly Green-tailed, which I’ll post.

HaukeKoch wrote:

13 Jan 2024

The beetles in the first and second image are Anoplognathus porosus, third one is A. brunnipennis (probably that one should be deleted from this observation).

HaukeKoch wrote:

13 Jan 2024

The fly is super interesting, I think it definitely looks like Pyrgotidae, and the second image looks like it has bent its ovipositor under its body towards the beetle to oviposit. Looks quite like Maenomenus ensifer, which apparently has been observed to parasitise Anoplognathus before (http://www.faculty.ucr.edu/~legneref/identify/pyrgotid.htm). Never seen that myself though, very nice observation!

Pirom wrote:

13 Jan 2024

I’ve added fly as sighting 4544201. Declining parasites get no love! Also deleted the errant photo - the two species were intermingled and fairly high confusing me. Thanks.

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