• Question from:Vandana

I am into clicking bugs,moths and everything else that lives around here these days....with my 8 mega pixel camera....and often find many intriguing subjects ....

Please identify this really beautiful beetle for me...it is 1 cm in length .....hope to find many more creatures to ask out here.

I took this in Kodagu(Coorg), Karnataka, India

Thanks









P.S couldnt attach the pic earlier

Post's pictures

833713.jpg, 81.77 kb, 816 x 612

Photo
  • South London
  • Posts: 527

Hi Vandana,

I'm afraid that most of the biologists on this site are UK or US based; I'm not sure that we have a coleopterist particularly familiar with the fauna of the Indian subcontinent .

Rich Comont might be able to give you more details but I would guess (based on extrapolation from my rather limited knowledge of UK beetle anatomy) that the overall shape, simplistic antennae and enlarged tragi suggests a member of the Chrysomelidae (the leaf beetles).

There are over 250 species of this family in the UK alone; thus, if it is a leaf beetle, chances are that India has a bucketload more than we do, making ID tricky, to say the least!

Photo
  • CEH Wallingford & Oxford University
  • Posts: 185

I agree with Dave - the antennae and tarsi ('feet') strongly suggest a Chrysomelid, but even in Britain many species can't be reliably identified from a photo. This book - http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Fauna-Briti … 0548486794 - is basically a checklist of the chrysomelids of India and it's 564 pages long, so there's a lot of species to choose from!