Day 261 - Respectfully Beautiful Rove Beetle

Beetle's Eye View of the Ocypus Brunnipes

Hey everyone today's Day 261 and I love to go to a place called Silton Forest, as 99.9% of you will know, and it is filled with insects, birds, rodents, small mammals and even large mammals such as deer! I usually see bugs and insects the most and I love taking pictures of them and of course writing the posts about them. One of them that I will definitely like to cover is the Respectfully Beautiful Rove Beetle.

So, here are the facts:

• Rove Beetles are a family of Beetles called Staphylinid, they are identifiable because of their short elytra or wing cases.

• You wouldn't think that a Rove Beetle is a real Beetle at all as it looks nothing like one because of these short forewings and its exposed abdomen. 

• They can still fly, though. Most Rove Beetles have another set of wings on their back to make up for their short front ones.

Hello?

• Most Rove Beetles have glands where they release chemicals for defence and for 'Chemical Mimicry'.

• In the 1998 count of beetles, there was a huge amount of beetles in the Staphylinid species. There were 46,275... !!

• The species of Rove Beetle that you can see in the pictures is an Ocypus Brunnipes. They aren't very common...

• ...There are hardly any of them in Ireland, it's the same story with Scotland. But in England and Wales there are quite a lot more. They are most common in the East of England.

Oh there you are.

• In the most recent count, it was found that there are actually 60,000 species of Rove Beetle, almost the same amount of Rove Beetle Species as there are animals with Backbones!! That's incredible!!

• The sizes range from 1mm all the way up to 35mm but they average from 2mm to 8mm.

• They are believed to have lived as long as 240 million years ago!

Here are some links to some more information:

Scilogs - Ten Facts about Rove Beetles

Wikipedia - Rove Beetles

NatureSpot - Ocypus Brunnipes

Hope you enjoyed,

Z.