Eudesma undulata Melsheimer, 1846 - Eudesma undulata

I altered your image.

I brightened it and boosted the color saturation to give it a closer resemblance to the image I linked in my comment below. I also clone-stamped a few white specks off it. If you don't consider this an improvement, simply click Edit and reload your original.

… Jim McClarin, 7 October, 2007 - 4:51pm

Can you click on your name

under the image, which will take you to your contributor page, where you can edit and tell us more about yourself?

… john and jane balaban, 22 December, 2008 - 9:40am

Extremely rare!

Congratulations on your find. I had seen an image of this beetle before and found it here along with a nice writeup. It looks like you may have added to the natural history of the species with your observations.

If you care to shoot a ventral and a side view, they would be most welcome as well. In case you don't already have a technique worked out, what I've done for shooting ventral views of pinned specimens is stick the head of the pin into a small lump of modeling clay to hold it upright.

… Jim McClarin, 6 October, 2007 - 3:24am

Thanks

I'm glad you like it. I thought I'd add it first because I didn't think anyone else would get a photo of one. When I tried to look it up it was a little difficult because I wasn't expecting it to be rare. But once I found out what it was I went back and grabbed the fungus it was going into. I wanted to dissect the fungus to see what it was going after, but decided not to. I'll try to get some more shots of it if I can; I have to use my friend's microscope. I'll also try to get some pictures of my other specimens that aren't already on here.

… Kyle Schnepp, 6 October, 2007 - 10:52am

Do you still have the fungus?

I think it would be worthwhile to get an ID on it. It could be an important missing link in this beetle's life cycle. Then I would go ahead and see if anything was living in there. Maybe it was burrowing in to lay eggs. The larvae must be undescribed for a beetle so rare. That fungus or others of the same species may be home to larvae unknown to science.

… Jim McClarin, 6 October, 2007 - 11:08pm

Yeah

I think it's around here somewhere. I'll have to dig it out and look it up. I'll probably go to the woods where I found it this spring and look for more of the fungus.

… Kyle Schnepp, 7 October, 2007 - 12:35pm