Enneboeus marmoratus - please help look for this little beetle species in California
Last summer, I photographed an unfamiliar, small, dark beetle at our balcony lights in San Francisco. An expert (Matt Gimmel) eventually identified it as Enneboeus marmoratus, a new species for the US, and published a paper on the find:
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/7734790
http://www.bioone.org/doi/abs/10.1649/0010-065X-72.2.269
https://bugguide.net/node/view/1446701/bgimage
I again found quite a few of these beetles at a black light placed on our balcony recently (a year later), so this appears to be a persistent and even abundant introduced species here in Noe Valley. The question is how widespread is this beetle in in the Bay Area or beyond? If you look for insects at lights or put out a black light for moths, etc. - please consider looking for and photographing small (3-4 mm) dark beetles with somewhat vague dark red patches of hairs on the back of the elytra, somewhat resembling a dark lady beetle to my eyes (see links above). Thanks!
@kueda @loarie @gyrrlfalcon @tiwane @finatic @damontighe @silversea_starsong @catchang @moonlittrails @owicki @rjadams55
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Very cool @kschnei! I'll be on the lookout.
so cool @kschnei !
@kschnei - would collections be useful if we encounter it? Ethanol storage or another preferred method?
Thank you for posting this. I will certainly keep my eyes open.
@damontighe : yes, collecting them would be ideal (ethanol is fine). FWIW, I've mostly encountered them on warm, late summer and fall nights (not a common situation in San Francisco, but we get them occasionally)... I assume that folks are more likely to be out there looking and photographing on warm evenings anyway....
Thanks - I am happy to photograph anything that I can see!
Really cool. It's not even from a Family that I've seen. But I'll be looking for it down south here.
will keep an eye out
@kschnei, curious that you are only acknowledged in the publication ... and not a co-author given that you found this critter and got it into the right hands. Just raising a question about the role of ‘citizen scientists’ in the discovery process. I don’t have the answers. A new sp. observation in the US seems like leaps and bounds above the typical observation of a species in a new location, etc. And, of course, I’ll keep an eye out. Cheers.
@metsa : Matt generously offered to make me an author on this paper, but I declined and asked to be in the acknowledgements instead. I think it might be a "gray area", but I felt that finding a beetle I couldn't identify and getting help from an expert didn't qualify for authorship in my mind. I've authored or been a co-author on scientific papers in the past and I feel like I would need to make more of a substantive contribution to the body of the paper...
Looks like @catchang found this species in Oakland!
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/17054533
So perhaps it has spread throughout the Bay Area? Will be very curious if folks find it elsewhere in California.
@damontighe Do you have ethanol and collection tubes? I’ll try tonight as well.
@catchang I've got tubes and 98% Ethanol
Another great example of the power of the iNat community! :)
Collection completed.
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