Identification, Images, & Information
For Insects, Spiders & Their Kin
For the United States & Canada

Species Mordellistena aspersa

Mordellistena  - Mordellistena aspersa Mordellistena  - Mordellistena aspersa Mordellistena aspersa Tumbling flower beetle - Mordellistena aspersa Beetle - Mordellistena aspersa Beetle - Mordellistena aspersa Mordellistena aspersa Mordellistena aspersa
Classification
Kingdom Animalia (Animals)
Phylum Arthropoda (Arthropods)
Subphylum Hexapoda (Hexapods)
Class Insecta (Insects)
Order Coleoptera (Beetles)
Suborder Polyphaga
No Taxon (Series Cucujiformia)
Superfamily Tenebrionoidea
Family Mordellidae (Tumbling Flower Beetles)
Tribe Mordellistenini
Genus Mordellistena
Species aspersa (Mordellistena aspersa)
Synonyms and other taxonomic changes
Mordella aspersa Melsheimer, 1846
Explanation of Names
Mordellistena aspersa (Melsheimer, 1846)
Size
"small" (for Morellids) 2-2.5mm to apices of elytra
Identification
entirely black with brownish-gray pubescence. Hind leg ridges, 2,3,2 (not counting subapical on tibia), with tibia with "rudiment of a third ridge, this third ridge sometimes rather long, but very narrow and usually more oblique than others" (1)
Range
nearly every state - very common (1)
Food
larva found boring in the pithy walls of the gall formation of the Trupaneid fly Eurosta solidaginis(1)
Works Cited
1.Monograph of the Family Mordellidae (Coleoptera) of North America, North of Mexico
Emil Liljeblad. 1945. University of Michigan Press.