Beetle for ID

[PeterD]

This is a tiny beetle seen in September.



Click here for larger image.



Click here for larger image.

Thank you

[pammosley]

Hi, it may be a type of Leaf/Flea beetle, but I`d wait for someone who knows what they are talking about

[Jason Green]

Evening Peter,

It's a Flea Beetle (Chrysomelidae); a microscope job usually. How long was it, roughly?

Take care,

Jason

[Fauna]

I'm probably off the mark again (tricky little things from photos), but it looks like Neocrepidodera ferruginea?

[PeterD]

Originally Posted by pammosley

Hi, it may be a type of Leaf/Flea beetle, but I`d wait for someone who knows what they are talking about

Thanks for your reply

[PeterD]

Originally Posted by Jason Green

Evening Peter,

It's a Flea Beetle (Chrysomelidae); a microscope job usually. How long was it, roughly?

Take care,

Jason

Hi Jason. Thanks for your reply.

I guess, no more than 3mm. The dandelion should give some idea of the scale.

[PeterD]

Originally Posted by Fauna

I'm probably off the mark again (tricky little things from photos), but it looks like Neocrepidodera ferruginea?

Thanks for your reply.

I guess the jury is still out?

[Klaas Reißmann]

I know the genus Asiorestia. I have no idea if anyone was so "clever" to examinate this genus and turn it into Neocrepidodera or if it is one more difference in the point of view between Great Britain and Germany.

In my mind it is not possible to identificate the species, because there are some more looking like this. The most common ones are Asiorestia ferruginea and the bigger A. transversa.

I would need by far better pictures to say more.

Regards
Klaas

[Jason Green]

Funny, I thoght the whole purpose of the use of Latin was to unify the study globally, to the most basic sense! Anyway, I had a thought or two towards Neocrepidodera, but wouldn't fancy going further.

Klass, you seem to be a Beetle man - what's the best method of finding Flea Beetles? I hope to do a bit more on them next year.

[Klaas Reißmann]

Hi Jason,

the whole purpose of the use of scientific names (not latin names!) is to unify the study globally, but some of the guys working with it forget about this fact. They only see the scientific side and do what they think they have to do. That's because of rules that say, that the older name has to be prefered (especially in former times many species were discribed twice or more often, because the scientists didn't know about the new species - news took a much longer time to go around the world).

In other cases they found new knowledge and because of it the beetle couldn't stay where in stood till yet. Take a bad example of Haliplus obliquus, H. confinis and H. varius. The three beetles have been in the same sub-genus Haliplus s.str. Someone found the larva of H. varius, which was unknown till somewhere in the 1990th, and found out, that this larva did not feed on Bacillariophyta like those of the other two species. They have totally different mouthparts and so they were taken out of the sub-genus Haliplus.

In other cases someone made an examination on a genus. Take a look at the family Apionidae. In former times it was the sub-family Apioninae with only the super-genus Apion. Today it is the family Apionidae and all the sub-genuses were raised into genuses. The genus Nanophyes is a very special part of this. In former times it was not an Apioninae, but an own sub-family of the Curculionidae (like the Apioninae). Than they were taken into the family Apionidae. Today no one would say that this is an Apionidae. I'm not quite sure, but I think they got their own family. And that's all because of morphological differences.

As you can see there a many causes to change things. Some causes are allright whereas others seem to be rubbish and in many cases the scientists seem to do work to incense themselves.

Let's go to the more interresting questions you have. No, I'm not a Beetle man, I'm a beetle. Most of my spare time I spend in doing beetles. If you take a very good look at kerbtier.de, there is a lot of my spare time gone into different reports I wrote for this pages for my friend Christoph.

Looking for flee beetles is more or less easy. If you know plants they live on you can find the beetles itself. On thistles you will find Sphaeroderma testacea whereas the very similar species Sphaeroderma rubidum is found on Centaurea. And so you can find many flee beetles by looking for their plants. A very helpful book for this is "Phytophage Käfer und ihre Wirtspflanzen in Mitteleuropa" ("phytophagous beetles and their plants in Central Europe") by Joachim Böhme.

Even it is in German, it is very useful for nongermans, because most of all it works with the scientific names of plants and beetles and puts plants and beetles together. I'm sure everyone can understand the important parts of the book, even those who don't speak German. You can find it at:

https://www.bioform.de/shop.php?acti...-1&treeid=2320

The owner of this shop, Juergen Schmidl, is a Beetle man, too. If you need any help by ordering or what ever, do not hesitate to ask for help.

Regards
Klaas