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Photo#292839
Tiny Anthribidae - Ormiscus quercus

Tiny Anthribidae - Ormiscus quercus
Lower Carr Canyon, Huachuca Mnts., Cochise County, Arizona, USA
June 16, 2009
Size: 2mm?

Ormiscus quercus (Schaeffer, 1906)
Barry Valentine det.
His comment: "A very neat beast, originally described in the synonymic genus Toxotropis, from, of all places, the Huachuca Mts., without a more exact location. It is rare -- we spent six weeks in July-August 1993, in the Huachucas, and never saw it; and I have had several shorter visits, without success. I have seen the type and a total of 7 additional specimens (all females) in my 60+ years of anthribid work; all (weevils, not years) were from the mts. of southeastern Arizona, most from the Huachucas. Ormiscus is by far the largest New World genus, about 70 described species, and maybe 100 more undescribed. Since the genus is most easily organized by the male secondary sexual features (on the mid and hind tibiae) and some species appear to be parthenogenetic, this is a real nightmare. The first species of the genus was collected by Charles Darwin in the Galapagos, other species occur from Canada to Argentina and throughout the West Indies. In all my years of collecting, I have never found any association of this genus with obvious fungi although all were on dying or dead twigs or small branches. Like many other anthribids, "fungus weevil" is not an appropriate name. By the way, that is a beautiful photo of a very small beast; I congratulate Brummermann for her skill. Does she maintain a collection? I would be glad to correspond or help if I can."

 
Thank you Barry Valentine and Vassili!
This is really exciting. The specimen is frozen right now. As you say it is very small and my vaucher collection is not set up to do justice to it. So if you are interested you can have it - just let me know exactly how to preseve it for your purposes. mbrummermann@comcast.net

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