Found hiding in a rather curled-up soft conk growing from a 12-ft. birch snag along with a number of hard conks. This is my first member of this family, which makes the 80th beetle family I have collected and photographed.

I had the impression this beetle was not interested in the soft conk other than as a hiding place, having read that they tend to hide away by day and only come out at night to munch on conks. I had the impression that hard conks were where they layed their eggs. I gathered a majority of the hard conks from this snag so I can examine any larvae living in them and perhaps rear some zopherids.

This and many other new beetles were collected on my trips to this area near Mt. Washington to search for the extremely rare Pyt*ho stri*ctus, last reported on Mt. Washington over 100 years ago.