...for confirming my ID, Ted. I appreciate your taking the time. I'll try setting out fermenting baits next spring, hoping to attract more. (Any recommendations? -- molasses & beer & yeast, or something else? Just in a bucket, or can you suggest a trap of some kind? I often set a vane trap with funnel below and bottle below that, baited with 50% ethanol/water in the bottle which both attracts and preserves xylophagous insects; but I've never caught a Purpuricenus in it.)

...with the formula in Champlain & Knull (1932): 12 oz. can of beer and 16 oz. jar of molasses brought up to 1 gallon with water and a packet of dry yeast to get the fermentation going quicker (tip: add the beer last or it will foam all over the place when you try to mix the slurry). I always poured the bait (~1/2 gallon) into a 1-G bucket hung at the sunny edge of a woods (but hidden from vandals) and checked it twice/week. The first 2-3 days were light, then it would be really attractive for the next week to 10 days, and after that it would just die, so I made fresh bait every 2 weeks. I poured the bait and contents through a seive into another bucket, picked out the good stuff and dropped it into a bottle of water (to wash during the trip home), and then either mounted it that evening or transferred to vials with ethyl acetate for storage. I didn't get Purpuricenus everywhere I set traps, but where I did get them they usually came in numbers. They seemed to prefer drier forests with lots of post oak.

I must give this 50% ethanol that I keep reading about a try.

Thanks for the tips; can't wait to try 'em next spring.

The vane traps I mentioned were described by Montgomery & Wargo (1983): http://www.springerlink.com/content/r718037g14n00782/. These easily made traps, baited with 50% EtOH, regularly trap (for me in Connecticut) droves of scolytids, an assortment of clerids, Glischrochilus, several elaterids, occasional unusual scarabs such as Gnorimella maculosa, the odd little salpingid Rhinosimus viridiaeneus, and lamiine and other cerambycids, among others. I have trapped many beetle species in these vane traps that I haven't taken any other way. I usually hang them 2-4 meters up trees in wooded areas; I got great results adjacent to a small sawmill where logs and lumber were stored. I generally empty the trap bottle once a week or so, straining the contents just as you described, then storing the catch in 70% ethanol until pinning/pointing.

I wish it were P. paraxillaris (it might have been the first confirmed Connecticut record). Indeed, Lingafelter's key and side-view photos of pronota of this and P. axillaris had me thinking it was paraxillaris at first. But, Ted MacRae's helpful ID tips here on BugGuide had persuaded me that it is not: My specimen has the median pronotal callus not polished, and elytral apices not distinctly dentate. Perhaps he will comment. I could send him the specimen to check if he wished.

I've been collecting Connecticut beetles for nearly 30 years, including a fair amount of vane trapping using 50% ethanol as bait (Montgomery & Wargo trap), which attracts a number of 'bycids. However, the specimen in my photo is the first Purpuricenus I've ever caught, and it just alighted beside me as I was sitting on my deck, with no fermenting fruit anywhere around.

i'll ask Ted to take a look