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Dynastes hercules
I agree Bill! Never too late for learning! Looking at the millions of pictures the last year I always detected something new... For my part I will not delete any wrong suggestion, just to show me my limits and for others to start interesting discussions. Thanks for the additional links. I already use them on a regular base.
....and I've learned far more form my mistakes than I ever have from my successes! btw, My pencils all still have erasers ;)
Never let anyone convince you they know everything...about anything.
We all make mistakes ;)
But in this case I'm 99.9999....% confident in Megosoma sp =elephas - which is actually a better find. Unfortunately members of this Genus are disappearing. We have 3 Megasoma in the sw. USA, but they are small.
Cicadas are among my favorites & very hard - Although I'm very good with id's, I still miss a few members within the more complicated species groups and/or those with very similar appearance and/or taxonomically in need of revision.
Please keep taking pic's!
Bosque Nuevo in Guanacaste has some info on Megasoma in Costa Rica.
http://elbosquenuevo.org/research_center...
Butterfliies of the Americas (a few of these are also misidentified - but there are thousands of pic's and most are right!!)
http://butterfliesofamerica.com/L/Neotro...
Such guys are exactly what we need here! Thanks for your support to help with IDs! I hope you will not stumble over more wrong IDs of mine...
Wiki covers a lot of things and a lot of the bugs and pic's still need to be reviewed before posted or finalized. The mistakes are generally typical and most are not far off. However, some sites can be a mess!
I have collected and/or reared a number of the Dynastes and Megasoma spp.
Currently, I work with Bugguide, iNaturalist and NoahProj. reveiwing and id'ing some of my favorite insect groups (incl. Scarabs, Cicadas, Saturniid Moths, and some butterflies - special interest in Morphos). Too many bugs and not enough time. I also prefer to attach more trusted ref. links to help others with future id's.
Sorry - wanted to add this for you in the 1st response.
Megasoma elephas
http://museum.unl.edu/research/entomolog...
Thanks Bill for the correction! ID was a longtime ago, in the meanwhile I know that Wiki is not always trustable.
The texture to the elytra is the key to id.
The wiki page has a misidentified female as well ;)
NOT D. hercules female on the wiki page, but rather a Megasoma elephas too.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynastes_he...
Megasoma elephas has a velvety tan (suede) texture to the wing covers while
Dyanstes hercules has a heavily punctated anterior with a slick green to orangish-tan posterior usually marked with tiny specks of black.
http://museum.unl.edu/research/entomolog...
No horns means female, huge and long horn means male. I think it is the female, since it would have been the male you certainly would have taken the picture WITH this impressive "horn".
Spotted on May 25, 2012
Submitted on May 25, 2012
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