Crimson-tailed Flower Beetle
Size about 13mm. Flying onto our lemon tree and scanning some leaves. I am pretty sure it is carnivorous. It stopped occasionally. To sweep the leaves it had the head close to them with the long antennae sticking out in a 90 degree angle. The animal could not easily be disturbed by my flash photography (I gave up when an ant bit me). Having found an earwig yesterday, I am pretty sure that this is not even in the same order. It rather resembles my Orange-tailed Rove Beetle in a sister gallery. And what a beauty this one is, showing such an impressive colouration on its body, with shiny bright red, clearest white, yellow, black. It has big compound eyes but no or only tiny oculi. Mandibles seem relatively short. The body often formed a S-shape, with the red tail sticking up, sometimes erecting it more when approached probably as a warning signal. Abdomen and lower thorax are covered in bristly hair and so are the legs. Amazingly, the hair of the thorax point forward, abdomen backwards. Upper abdomen is white with a red area adjoining the black thorax. The shoulders show each a spiky stump. Neck and head are orange. Any help for identification is appreciated. Update 21/10/2016: Obviously my identification of Rove Beetle was incorrect. I stumbled across several 100% photo matches, all of them naming this species Carphurus. This is another bleeding taxonomic group where nobody seems to care about bringing order into a long list of species descriptions. I do not agree calling this animal anything starting with Yellow, pretty much the only colour not prominent in this animal. I did an extensive search on original documents all ending in nothing but surprise. I came across more than hundred Carphurus species, with hardly any known to ALA or GBIF. My best guess is that this species - if it is not an undescribed species - contains the latin word red. I didnt' manage to find scans of the original documents and it was hard enough to find and decypher the reference for C. rubroannulatus. Fairmaire (1879): Petites nouvelles entomologiques, No. 67, p. 480.
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