This one looks slightly different than Tom's other photo, also labeled C. hieroglyphica. Cedar Creek shows 3 species of Ctenicera but there's 151 additional species listed at nearctica.com and I imagine that a number of them resemble the ones shown at Cedar Creek. Are you sure this one is C. hieroglyphica?

I believe there's only one that looks like this, and it's now in a new genus, Pseudanostirus (Am Beetles describes Ctenicera as sort of a "holding genus")

there's only one that looks like this?

there appears to be only one in the northeast that looks like this. I've just re-read the descriptions for the 41 Ctenicera listed in Downie and Arnett, and there are a couple others that come close, (C. hamata and C. propola) yet are distinctly different. Note the black crossbands on this one are "interrupted" at the first elytra interval - apparently unique to C. hieroglyphica.

I'm wanting to add some descriptive info to the Guide for future reference but I don't know what is meant by "first elytra interval". Although the black crossbands on this one appear to be interrupted (i.e. they don't reach the midline of the body), the same cannot be said for Tom's photo of this individual whose elytra show two black triangular patches that touch extensively along the midline.

If these two individuals belong to the same species, a description of the species would have to accommodate the variation seen here.

the "elytra intervals" are simply the spaces between the stria or lines of punctures. Intervals are often slightly convex, and may have some punctures themselves. I believe they are typically numbered starting from the suture (meeting of the elytra) and counting outward. (A glossary addition would probably be helpful)

Regarding Tom's 2003 photo, you can see that the forward crossband clearly shows the first interval as yellow on both elytra (at these small magnifications the first interval almost appears to be the suture itself). I would submit that the photo is too blurry to accurately determine what the aft crossband looks like in the first interval.

There's photos of a "Corymbites furcifer" (synonym of Ctenicera propola) here that look sort of intermediate between the above photo from Connecticut, and these two (1, 2) from Massachusetts. Except for the lack of black apical patches, I think they seem closer to the Massachusetts individuals. This PDF doc shows C. propola propola distributed coast to coast across Canada, so it probably occurs in the northeastern states too.

I added some info to the species page but was unable to come up with a description because I'm still not certain whether the 3 BugGuide photos are all the same species.

well after further review, it appears you are more correct than me. First, the Downie and Arnett key separates the two(Cteanicera) by:
hieroglyphica - "antenna pale; length >10mm"
propola - "antenna black; length less than 10mm"

The 3 MCZ images under "current name" of Ctenicera propola all appear to be under 10mm (best I can measure), but one clearly has pale antenna. Perhaps this one is incorrectly named.

Better, Dr. Paul Johnson's (author of Am Beetle - Elateridae) web site has a photo of Pseudanostirus propolus (LeConte), which clearly has black antenna.

I'll leave it to others to say how big the current beetles imaged were, but to me, they all appear to have black antenna (or at least not pale).

So perhaps we've currently got them in the correct genus, but wrong species.

Thanks Stephen.