Diaperis success

A brief reintroduction

Diaperis rufipes is a relatively small and severely understudied fungus tenebrionid, roughly the size, shape, and color of a stereotypical coccinellid beetle. Because it is preferentially nocturnal and its hosts' fruiting bodies are often quite distant from each other, its populations appear highly localized, clustered, and cryptic (probably why it is both understudied and very common near good hosts). Those of you who have been reading the old Splendid Unknowns (before spambot issues put it on perma-lockdown) may be familiar with it from two summers ago; it swarmed in vast numbers on a squishy polypore, eventually fleeing en masse once the host sufficiently rotted (a few did stay behind longer, though). Unfortunately, at the time my phone camera was even worse than it is now and I could not effectively document any science on them. The current fruiting is from the same tree, and I am scrambling to maximize science absorption before it dies again.




So what actually happened tonight?

I found two Diaperis rufipes specimens! Just as well, because the fungal fruitbody probably has not much longer to live (we appear to be in the stage when most of the beetles have fled). In an effort to photograph them, I accidentally launched the first one some distance off its host! D. rufipes appears to clamp tightly onto objects as a major defense mechanism (unlike classic tenebrionids such as Zophobas/Eleodes, which often accidentally fall off tall objects). Ironically, its other two major defenses are deliberately falling off tall objects and producing repellent secretions which smell exactly like those of Zophobas! Fortunately the second beetle was successfully prodded off the fungus and posed well while I fumbled angrily with the lighting.

Bonus video: when flipped, it will spread its elytra and flight wings in an attempt to right itself ("tenebrionids are flightless" is not a completely true statement)