Unknown insect - is it a coleopteron ?

[leon]

Caught flying around a porch light. It measures 1.5 cm. and is brownish black in color.
Is it a beetle ? What's the Genus ?

[trehopr1]

You have a click beetle Leon. Family Elateridae. I can be no more specific as they have never been a focus of my interest.

[leon]

Aug 30, 2016 4:48:33 GMT trehopr1 said:

You have a click beetle Leon. Family Elateridae. I can be no more specific as they have never been a focus of my interest.

Thank you. That gives me a start.

[isidro]

You will need to find an expert in Elateridae for pass from this "start". As obvious is the family, as difficult is the genus and species. I don't know none page for North America as I live in the other side of the world, but this page is the best for consult Elateridae of Eurasia: www.elateridae.com/result.php There are 27 pages at 45 species per page, so more or less 1200 species in total. Probably, roughly the same number of species will be found in Nearctic, and many of them almost identical-looking ones to others. If you have the collected specimen and can examine the genitalia, probably you could get an ID, but if not, its don't seems very probable to get the species name.

[leon]

Thanks again. I checked that site; it appears that there are many that don't conform at all to my specimen. The legs are of different color, The protonum on many is quite different - nevertheless it'll be a difficult job to find the genus, and, of course, impossible to ID the species.
Collecting coleoptera is fun.....isn't it ?

[leon]

I'm pretty sure that its : Melanotus sp.

[entomofou]

This website is about Old World species. You probably have other genus in Nearctic countries...

[jshuey]

Hi Leon,

I see you are in grand rapids. If you can, you should try and make it down to the MSU collection. It's world class (~1.5m bugs) - and the curators there are super nice.  Every spring - they have an open house at the collections called "Breaking diapause".  I just checked, and it's not on the calendar yet - but it's a great place to meet other collectors and take a look at the collection.

John

[leon]

Aug 31, 2016 13:11:26 GMT jshuey said:

Hi Leon,

I see you are in grand rapids. If you can, you should try and make it down to the MSU collection. It's world class (~1.5m bugs) - and the curators there are super nice.  Every spring - they have an open house at the collections called "Breaking diapause".  I just checked, and it's not on the calendar yet - but it's a great place to meet other collectors and take a look at the collection.

John

Thanks, John....that's an excellent idea. I think I'll wait until I've got several specimens to ID and then go there. Of course I'll have to contact them and see how to go about it.