Beetle blueprints

Introducing RSPB Scotland Trainee Ecologists Kirsty Godsman and Genevieve Dalley. Over the next few months they will be blogging about their experiences in the field, helping us learn more about the beetles and freshwater invertebrates that call our reserves home. First up is Kirsty...

Beetle blueprints

I am a new ecology trainee at RSPB Scotland in Edinburgh and I will be spending the next eight months working on my ecology skills and developing some specialist identification skills. As you might have guessed from the title, I am passionate about beetles and this is what I will be specialising in.

Beetles are some of the most varied animals on the planet. One in every four species of animal is a beetle. They cover almost every conceivable diet – some live on dead wood, others feed on living plant matter (this could mean leaves, flowers or pollen. Some beetles even specialise on a particular species of plant too!). They can be predators or herbivores or detritivores or fungivores. I will stop there. You probably guess then, that beetles also come in a variety of shapes, sizes and colours- and you would be right. What I have always found interesting is how, when in the know, you can tell a little bit about what an animal does on a daily basis by the way they look. You can see this as you go from beetle family to beetle family. The differences can also be seen, although more subtly, within families of beetles.

The ground beetles are a popular group amongst Coleopterists and so I will start here. They are typically predators of smaller insects. So think about a predatory animal... maybe a jaguar or a fox. They need to be fast to catch their prey and they need powerful claws or jaws and sharp teeth to kill them. Ground beetles have long slender legs to enable to them to run fast – and they really can move quickly! If you happened to be an insect, you would really think they had powerful jaws although they don’t seem that big a deal to the likes of you and me.

The Green Tiger Beetle (Cicindela campestris) – terrifying?

Speaking of beetle legs, they really can tell you a lot about the species. Water beetles, for example, tend to have legs a bit like paddles to help them swim. There is another group of beetles called flea beetles, which have very enlarged “thighs” on their back legs to help them jump. I could go on but I will give only one more example. You may have come across dung beetles before. Their legs are particularly good at digging because they are flat and wide like a spade and have rake-like projections on them.

1. running 2. swimming 3. jumping 4. digging (photos via http://bit.ly/1fRjWQx) 

In celebration of my new role and my interest in beetles, I will be picking a beetle of the month, every month, for the duration of my training. Now I missed April as I was settling in but, had I picked a beetle of the month, I think it would have had to have been one of the oil beetles (from the genus Meloe).

The black oil beetle (Meloe proscarabaeus).

These beetles are huge by UK insect standards and start appearing around spring so they would have been a natural choice. They have a very interesting life cycle that I would encourage you to look into. However, it is not April anymore so the new beetle of the month will be.... Agonum marginatum.

This beautiful creature has been picked because of its amazing colour and the micro-sculpture of its wing-cases (elytra). I hope you can appreciate this from these pictures!

A close up of A. marginatum’s wing case showing the incredible colours and the micro-sculpture.

This ground beetle is quite widespread in the UK and tends to be found near water where there is little vegetation – if you were to look under stones and at the sides of lochs around this time of year, you might just find this little beauty as it breeds in spring. I also like this species for the fact that it is relatively easy to identify due to the combination of the metallic green colouring with yellow around the edges. Like many beetles, it does not have a common name. However, the marginatum in the name hints at the yellow margins on this beetle. Hopefully this will help you remember the name if you come across it.