Identification, Images, & Information
For Insects, Spiders & Their Kin
For the United States & Canada
Clickable Guide
Moths Butterflies Flies Caterpillars Flies Dragonflies Flies Mantids Cockroaches Bees and Wasps Walkingsticks Earwigs Ants Termites Hoppers and Kin Hoppers and Kin Beetles True Bugs Fleas Grasshoppers and Kin Ticks Spiders Scorpions Centipedes Millipedes

Calendar

TaxonomyBrowseInfoImagesLinksBooksData
Photo#619542
C. floridana in Louisiana? - Calligrapha floridana

C. floridana in Louisiana? - Calligrapha floridana
Dog Levee, Mississippi River bank, Orleans Parish, Louisiana, USA
March 11, 2012
Size: 9mm
This morning I took my dogs to the levee to run around, and I found this beetle on the dogwoods that grow by the riverbank. I'm pretty certain the tree was Cornus foemina (= C. stricta), and there were LOTS of this beetle. Mating pairs of adults all over, lots of egg clusters, lots of developing larvae. Is the beetle Calligrapha floridana? It sure looks like it to me.

Images of this individual: tag all
C. floridana in Louisiana? - Calligrapha floridana C. floridana in Louisiana? - Calligrapha floridana

Moved tentatively per Dr Gomez-Zurita's suggestion
his recent comment: "I still think it could be C. floridana. Despite the slightly misleading name, this species occupies a large part of the US, reaching Maryland to the north (it's the same species I erroneously named C. knabi in our 2006 article in Evolution!)."

Moved from scalaris group.

Moved

Jesús Gómez-Zurita says: "This one is difficult to answer.
"We have collected C. floridana-like beetles all the way from Florida to the Carolinas and westwards to Lousiana. And at the Smithsonian collection I had seen these animals from several other localities in SE North America. We are currently studying these animals from a genetic point of view to try to figure out whether they are a single species or more than one. At some point soon, we will have an answer!"

Moved from Calligrapha.

 
Interesting!
Thanks for investigating so quickly. I've actually sent Calligrapha specimens to one of Dr. Gomez-Zurita's students in the past, and so I wrote today to offer specimens from this site in case it would be helpful to their project.

I think there are a lot of species whose range has been restricted to Florida and/or Texas in the past, but that are now expanding across the entire gulf coast (and I expect there will be many more in the near future). This wasp also appears to be an example:

 
thanks for the interesting info, Mark

Comment viewing options
Select your preferred way to display the comments and click 'Save settings' to activate your changes.