A worldwide community photographing and learning about wildlife
Project Noah Nature School
Limonius aurifer
Woodland habitat
This is, by far, the smallest click beetle I have found at about 3mm. The really interesting thing was that it was eating the "guts" of a very tiny caterpillar that I didn't even see until I was looking in the view finder.
Spotted on Jun 4, 2014
Submitted on Jun 5, 2014
4 Comments
Ah, Sergio! The plot does thicken! Thanks for helping me along on this one. Much appreciated.
From Wikipedia: "Click beetle larvae, called wireworms, are usually saprophagous, living on dead organisms, but some species are serious agricultural pests, and others are active predators of other insect larvae." The mistery remains... :-)
It certainly could Sergio. I tried to look for texture in the photo, but it seemed to be lacking. Your suggestion is much more scientific and logical than mine:) I was wondering if I hadn't squashed the little guy while turning the leaf over since I couldn't see him.
Nice find, Beaker. Couldn't it be that the beetle is eating the exuvia of the caterpillar on the left of the photo?