CLOSED: What Kind of Beetle?

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Lily_love Central, AL(Zone 7b) Sep 22, 2008

I saw this big beetle that crawling around after dark. Please help I.D.

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Lily_love Central, AL(Zone 7b) Sep 22, 2008

Pix #2

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Lily_love Central, AL(Zone 7b) Sep 22, 2008

It's crawling over a wateroak leave for scale.

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suunto Sinks Grove, WV Sep 22, 2008

Difficult to tell from the fuzzy images, but it could be in the family Passalidae, known by several common names including bess bugs, betsy beetles, etc. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passalidae for an image and more information to see if this matches your specimen.

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Lily_love Central, AL(Zone 7b) Sep 22, 2008

Hi Ed, sorry the pix isn't better. I wished I could have produced a clearer pix. So the bugs feed on decaying wood matters?

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suunto Sinks Grove, WV Sep 22, 2008

These beetles not only are completely harmless, but also are evolutionarily very interesting, as they exhibit some eusocial behavior in cooperative brood rearing - see http://www.jstor.org/pss/3494359 for a brief summary and “The Evolution of Social Behavior in Insects and Arachnids” by by Jae C. Choe, Bernard J. Crespi (Published by Cambridge University Press, 1997; ISBN 0521589770, 9780521589772) for an in-depth treatment of the subject. Both adults and larvae of passalids communicate through stridulation.

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