This beetle has been reared from one of the numerous larvae that a colleague of mine collected from bee corpses (Apis mellifera) found on a hive bottom board. Size: ca. 1.5mm. Location: NE Ukraine.
To my layman's eye, this looks like a Cryptophagus sp. (some species of which have been reported from bee hives), but I am not sure. So any help in its identification would be much appreciated.
I agree on the identification of the genus as - probably - Cryptophagus (family Cryptophagidae). Specific identification is surely more difficult and cannot be performed on the basis of (these) photos. Regards,
Rinaldo Nicoli
My younger friend Karol Szawaryn confirms your identification
Best regards
Ryszard
Dear Rinaldo & Ryszard,
Many thanks for the confirmation! Seems to be a too difficult genus to go down to the species level.
Best wishes,
Serhii
You should take your pictures with a bigger aperture to get more depth of focus, perhaps then could be seen more details?
Dear Serge,
You can find here some Cryptophagidae keys https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=sites&srcid=ZGVmYXVsdGRvbWFpbnxtaWtlc2luc2VjdGtleXN8Z3g6NjU5MWZjZTU2ODRmNmY3Mg
Georgi Lyubarski at Moscow State University Zoology Museum is the best person to ask for identification of your speicmens
Dear Serge, I am with Dmitry. Did you get an ID so far? You can also ask Jens Esser here on ResearchGate.. He is also a specialist of Cryptophagidae. Maybe he has an idea. Just in case that you don't found a solution so far. Your pictures show a larger number of morphological characters which are useful to contain the specimen into a group. Best regards, Thomas
Dear Thomas,
Thank you very much for this suggestion. I didn't think that it can be possible to identify it from these photos any further. I will ask the experts.
Best wishes,
Serhii
- Badges
- Science topic
- Similar topics
- Biological Science
- Zoology
- Invertebrate Zoology
- Entomology