Monday Night Mystery

[note: this and all preceding entries are reposted from myrmecos.wordpress.com; guesses for this Monday Night Mystery are also lodged here.]

What in the world is this strange creature?

The point breakdown* will be as follows:

2 points for order
2 points for family
2 points for genus
2 points for species
2 points for describing the behavior

As in past weeks, you have to be first in each category.


*What are Myrmecos points good for? The cumulative winner at the end of the month gets to choose either 1)any 8x10 print from alexanderwild.com, or 2) a guest blog post on a topic of their choosing.
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Welcome Alex, good to see you back.

Order: Hymenoptera
Family: Formicidae
Genus: Cephalotes
Species: rohweri

The colony nests in holes left by wood-boring beetles and soldier ants block the nest entrance with their heads (as here).

Would love to say that I had expert knowledge but google is my friend.

Source ....

alexanderwild.com

Was that cheating?

And then of course I wander over to look at your old blog....

Now, see, I feel better having read that bit of information from dominich. I was looking at that hole last night thinking it was a pretty nice D-shaped Buprestid-ey hole...but clearly a Buprestid was not lying within. I wanted the answer to this mystery to be "a beetle". I'm happy to know it is. A little bit. Sort of.

Hey, you should submit this photo to the Linnaean Games for the ESA national meeting.

By Entomologista (not verified) on 13 Apr 2010 #permalink

That's an awesome idea. The Linnaean games are great- our local team here at UI cleaned up last year in Indianapolis.

Coleoptera
Carabidae
Cychrus
Cychrus caraboides

Moist woodlands, feeds primarily on snails.

By rijkswaanvijand (not verified) on 16 Apr 2010 #permalink