Do I have to buy ANOTHER book?

I can see the automatic comment the Web site produces whenever an image is moved could be misleading. It's still in the Broad Nosed Weevils (Entiminae), just deeper. I moved it to the genus level. You can always see where a photo has been moved by looking just above the photo at the phylogeny string -- the last designation being the present location of the image.

So the subfamily is no longer correct? Is that what you are saying?

To quote myself above, "It's still in the Broad Nosed Weevils (Entiminae), just deeper."

It's as if you had a photo of a bird that you could at first identify only to subfamily, then later found out which genus it belonged to so you could move it from the level of subfamily to the level of genus. That's all that's happened here.

If you look at that phylogeny string above the photo, you will see that Entiminae is in it.

Did you know that one out of five species of living things (trees, fungi, microbes, animals) is a beetle species? You've entered a very speciose zone, Kathi :-)

But .. it seems that all the beetles in a Subfamily should still be there in the photos, even if they have been further identified. Ophryastes doesn't not appear when you clikc on Broad-nosed Weevil .. but I think it is still a "broad-nosed weevil" .. is it not?

And, further up the tree, there should be more and more individuals, waiting to be further id'd.

Program limitations?

is to reduce the number of images waiting to be IDed at any level. This is done by moving anything that has been IDed to species out of the genus cue, anything that has been IDed to genus out of the tibal or subfamily cue and so on. There are way too many beetles to allow everything that hasn't been identified to species to clutter up higher levels. This is useful as well because some specialists will only look under their taxon, not having time to look through everything else.

Of course you can click on any level and then click the Images tab to see page after page of thumbnail images of everything in that taxon. When you do this, the first batch of thumbnails will be of arthropods IDed only to that level. Following will be groups arranged by the further levels to which they have been IDed.

Therefore, if you go to Entiminae and click on the images tab, you will find your weevil, but not until you scroll down to its genus block of thumbnails.

Dr. O'Brien responded and said that the photos weren't enough to ID the beetle. To quote him, "Sorry but the extra pictures show no more than the first. Critical characters include the type of vestiture at the apex of the hind tibia in the corbell and the frontal view of the head and frons and the shape size and direction of the frontal and rostral grooves. There are several species that are basically identical to the photos, griseus and desertus come to mind. If you get to see a copy of Kissinger you could ID it . Perhaps a library near you has it. If you have only photos and not the specimen I doubt anyone can name it with any certainty further than Ophryastes .. "

He was speaking "entomologist" there .. I know what a tibia is . I think I need to buy a book, any suggestions?

But now, he/she is the only member there!

Did you read the book "DUST" ? It's about how important insects are to the world .. scientific fiction, and very entertaining.

All this has opened a new path for me. I'm looking at my flower photos and wondering "What's that bug?" I need to go out again to the East Mojave with this wondrous feeling.

It is no longer a Broad-nosed Weevil? What is it then?

I was looking for Ophryastes and came up with O. varius as the image most like it .. on Harvard's website of their collection. Very nice site where you can search by genus, location, etc. MCV type database at Harvard Entomology.

Still waiting for more info from Charles O'Brien.

It's a good thing he's big, he's got a lot of tumbleweeds to eat :-) n.b. this is in family Curculionidae. Darkling beetles are any member of family Tenebrionidae.

The BugGuide gurus are submitting this to Eric .. it looks like a Broad-nosed Weevil to me after looking on the internet. Silly me .. I thought all weevils were evil.

K.

Just click on image tab above your photo.

I think I once knew a Kathi Ellsworth. Ever been in New Hampshire, perhaps Meredith?

Nope ..

Ah, forget it :-) But that is one nice-looking weevil!

Many years ago... as I said, I'm surprised that this insect is a "weevil". Been a botanist/orni. so many years; there's a whole new world out there.

Thanks for the help.

Many are host specific. Some species are introduced to eat noxious weeds that are native to other parts of the world, E.G. star thistle.

Not Davis. Sorry. I was thinking Fair Oaks.

Any idea of genus or genus species of this weevil?

I find family curculionidae a little intimidating and don't know my way around in it. I'm even afraid to open the chapter in American Beetles. I was congratulating myself on just being able to give you subfamily. A weevil this large, however, has to be a standout that is bound to be recognized by someone.

Okay, I just conducted a fruitless search for images of weevils associated with the presumed host plant and all I came up with is this line from a Juliet Green song "My Shining Hour:"

"You really got me flyin’ in a tizzy feelin’ dizzy as a weevil in a tumbleweed,"

Good grief .. how did that song writer know about weevils in tumbleweeds! I didn't even know about weevils .. let's see .. Boll weevil rings a bell.

Guess we'll just have to wait for Eric Eaton.