Soldier beetle | Trujillo, Venezuela.

joslud (75)modCCS Quality Hunterin CCS • last month

Hello to all nature lovers! From this great community. I'm very happy; our feed is filling up with variety in both zoology and botany. Today I bring you an encounter with a "soldier."

Close Up: Soldier Beetle.

On one of my morning walks, I came across a place where a wide variety of insects were half-dormant, basking in the sun to warm themselves. Among them, a solitary beetle stood out. I discovered this through research, as I would have thought it was a type of bug (order: Hemiptera).


Well, it wasn't a bug, but a coleopteran. Its name: "Soldier beetle" of the genus Chauliognathus (thanks to Wikipedia and Google Lens). I found it peacefully perched on a leaf, soaking up the morning sun. They need to warm their blood, so they spend a few hours in the sun.

To identify them as beetles, the key is their mouths and wings: - 🐞 Beetles have mouths with chewing parts. - 🐞 And they have a pair of hard wings called elytra. Their elytra completely cover the membranous wings. In some species, this one, for example, the wings are not as hard, but it is clear that it has two pairs. - 🐞Because of the type of wings this family has, they are sometimes called "soft-bodied beetles."

Habitat and behavior.

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They live in areas with abundant vegetation, looking for flowers to feed on and damp or leafy areas to lay their eggs, which their larvae can then hunt. I live in a town above 1,758 meters above sea level, where it is quite cold here year-round. But we were able to witness that, at this altitude, this beetle species has acclimatized.

Soldier beetles are very active when they're looking for food. This one, however, loves the sun and didn't mind me getting close to photograph it. They eat flowers, leaves, and pollen, which is why they are helpful to humans in pollinating many flowers. They also eat small insects, such as caterpillars and aphids.

Classification

For a long time, this friend barely moved. This allowed me to get closer and get some good close-up photos, but its pose looks very static, although I guarantee that each photo is different. This is the zoological taxon I obtained from Wikipedia:

Scientific classification:
Phylum: Arthropoda
Class: Insecta
Order: Coleoptera
Suborder: Pentatomomorpha
Family: Cantharidae.
Genus: Chauliognathus
Species: unknown

Sources: See [1]

Info:

Item	Description
Equipment:	Umidigi Cell Phone A7S Camera
Mode:	Macro Mode. Layer: 3:4
Author:	@joslud
Edition:	Lightroom
Location:	Outdoor
Date:	Wed, Jun/29/ 24
In Inaturalist.org	Coordenadas: 9.146695, -70.703974 género Chauliognathus by @joslud

See you soon

Sources

Images
- Images and screenshots are my property. Taken with my UMIDIGI phone. Also based on screenshots on Steemit.
- [1] Chauliognathus in Wikipedia
- [2] Imperial soldier beetle in Jungledragon.com