Diaperis rufipes, 2020 season

The D. rufipes hostfungus had made a tiny crustlike fruiting body a few months ago this summer, but it promptly died. However now it is pumping out a properly shaped fruit, much to my surprise. I thought it was going to skip the large 3D fruits this year! I will be continuously watching it to collect data on the biology of rufipes.

Unfortunately as with previous years the only other dominant visitor to the fungus is a certain nondescript brown fly that seems to be a lauxaniid, with the rest being a very few species of boring generalist earwigs, gnats, slugs, etc.

Last night I spotted my first living rufipes adult and took it in for some photos. Unsurprisingly my idiot phone AI decided to mess with me again, even under bright light it insisted the red stripes were black and refused to focus despite being perfectly capable of doing so, so I'm not going to post most of those pics here.

However I have captured a single pic of it with flared wings (and thus proved it isn't flightless) and visible red, and this is undoubtedly the only photograph of it doing so in existence!

Like I said previously, it is (like most other longwinged tenebrionids) extremely unwilling to fly and cannot be induced to do so unless malnourished and attempting dispersal, so instead I turned it upside down and photographed it when it spread its elytra to right itself.

By the way the flared wings pic doesn't show its deep ruby red color perfectly so here's a semiblurry shot of it shortly after being placed back on its host.