Download high resolution image here.
I collected this beetle on South Crest Trl, 9400 ft,
Sandia Crest 7.5’ quadrangle in the
Sandia Mountains, Bernalillo Co, NM from a Berlese funnel loaded with soil from a 40 cm deep core sample taken of a
formica argentea nest. That is, the beetle was from 0 to 40 cm deep in the nest. I posted a representative worker ant from the nest for identification purposes (linked below). It's unlikely the beetle was a regular resident of the nest. There were numerous gambel oaks (
Quercus gambellii) nearby in an otherwise conifer forest.
From Mercado's interactive key
(1), the beetle's 1.48 mm body length, straight anterior elytra margin, lack of pregular brush, and the antennae's 5 funcile segments and near cicular/oval club with 3 procurved sutures narrows the genus to
Pseudopityophthorus or
Pityophthorus. From Mercado's
Pseudopityophthorus Fact Sheet, its well defined elytra stria and contiguous pronotal asperites imply it is
Pityophthorus. I was unable to make much progress with the species key of Wood 1982
(2). Expert confirmation of genus and ID of species is appreciated.
This image is from a
CombineZP processed stack of 156 images with a 3.6 µm step taken with a
Mitutoyo BD Plan APO 20×/0.42 ∞/0 mm microscope objective + Nikon 135 mm F2.8 AIS telephoto lens + Nikon D300 camera (magnification 13.5×; technique described
here).
Worker from nest: