I attacked a standing roadside tree with my bare hands on the way home from WalMart. Fortunately it was on the rotten side. I removed bark and rotten wood, exposing a hollow interior that had several species of fungi inside, evidenced by their fruiting bodies. One of the fungi was a tree fungus that I didn't recall having seen before. (Maybe it only grows inside hollow trees?)

At any rate, I collected samples of this fungus, some very pulpy wood, and some rodent nest material to check for small beetles at home with a hand lens. (I had found a click beetle and a female Neo*mida bicor*nis at the site.)

I suspected I might find a new (for me) species of ciid in the tree fungus since it appeared to be a new (for me) fungus species and many ciids are said to be very host-specific. Indeed, inside a few of the tree fungus lobes I ripped open, I found two minute tree fungus beetles different in appearance from the first species I encountered, Octo*temnus lae*vis. They are larger and considerably more hairy than the first species, shown here: and here (at least it appears to be the same species) alongside the larger one in the tumbnail below:

Of the two found at this site, the other is considerably larger than this one, but looks very similar, so I don't know whether they are different species or just different sizes in one species. Here's the other one:

And here they are together for comparison: