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Photo#143340
Aquatic beetle in the desert - Hydrophilus triangularis

Aquatic beetle in the desert - Hydrophilus triangularis
Eloy,, Pinal County, Arizona, USA
September 3, 2007
Size: 3 cm
When I come home at night from trips to northern Arizona, I always stop at a gas station off I10 in Eloy. They have the cheapest gas, and their lights attract everything from crickets to Calosoma and interesting moths. But this time, in the middle of this very arid stretch of Sonoran Desert, I found this big aquatic guy. Of course, if he didn't fly, he might have hitched a ride with one of the many trucks with boat trailers stopping for gas there.

Images of this individual: tag all
Aquatic beetle in the desert - Hydrophilus triangularis Aquatic beetle in the desert - Hydrophilus triangularis

There was a page already . . .
moved following ID given below.

hydrophilus. Don't know the s
hydrophilus. Don't know the species, but it's the genus Hydrophilus due to size and the family Hydrophilidae. It can be quickly ID'd to family a number of ways but the quickest is the presence of the large spine on the ventral surface that projects posteriorly

 
I did remember from a long ti
I did remember from a long time ago that that spine was important, that's why I included the ventral view.

 
underside image
shows those yellow-orange markings that to me say Hydrophilus triangularis

 
H. triangularis does not have
H. triangularis does not have a page yet. So I'll just leave it to the editors to move this either to genus or to a new page.

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