Dr. Mark Stromberg of the Hastings Reserve is looking for specimens of a beetle which emerges only at night during large storms in our area. Rain beetles are found throughout California and a few specimens were recently collected on the Hastings Reserve which is over the coast ridge from us in the Carmel Valley. Its name is Pleocoma lucia (for the Santa Lucia Mountains). It is about a half an inch long and has very distinctive orange" hair" between body sections. It looks like a punk rocker.
Another species, unofficially called Pleocoma garrapata, was collected in our watershed during the winter of 2003-2004 and 2004-2005. A partial species was collected in the 1930's. It is quite different from Pleocoma lucia and is probably a new species. Although they are previoulsy unknown the science, it is not clear if they are even rare in our watershed. They have a relatively short life span (a few weeks) and it doesn't even have mouth parts.
See the photo below and keep and eye out for them during stormy nights where they may be attracted to your porch lights. The best chance to see them is at night or early morning during the first big rains of the year. If you find one, put it in a glass jar with some dry tissue paper and keep it in the refrigerator (or a cool place). Contact us and we will pass it along to Mark. .
Here is a link to the foremost expert on these rain beetles.
Click to see larger image (takes about 30 seconds to download on our slow phone lines). If you want to save and print, right-click image below and select "save target as"... |
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This page was last updated on May 02, 2005