LIBRARY

570
COLLEGE ENTOMOLOGY
cular and nocturnal. The larvre of a number of species including Calophus angustus
Lee. and Nacerda melanura (Linn.) breed in dead coniferous timbers.
The latter has become quite injurious to lower. shaded, and damp timbers of
wharves along the California coast. Copidita 4-maculata (Mots.) breeds in old
wet mine and bridge timbers in California.
Family MORDELLIDE (Leach 1815).
Tumbling Flower Beetles. A large family of small beetles; characterized by
laterally compressed, arched, silky bodies pointed posteriorly and extending beyond
the tips of the elytra; long legs; and jumping and tumbling reactions when
disturbed. The adults are common on flowers. There are about 800 species
distributed throughout the world.
Family MELOIDlE Thomson 1859 (Me-lo'i.-dre, from the new Latin MeloiJ;
origin uncertain). German. Pflasterldifer, 6lkafe.r, Maiwiirmer. French,
Meloides. Blister Beetles, Oil Beetles, Meloids.
Medium-sized, elongated, somewhat cylindrical or robust, soft-bodied beetles
which are characterized in some species by having short, loosely connected
elytra. Smooth, rugose, sculptured, punctate, pubescent. or hairy. Colors
mostly somber - black, gray, brownish. or tan - or bright, with metallic
iridescences. Some species are beautifully sculptured, brilliantly colored. and
grotesquely formed. Head hypognathous, large, free, constricted at base.
Eyes large, widely separated. Antennre sedform or certain segments enlarged
in males; ll-segmented. Mouth parts well developed. Prothorax small, usually
not much wider than the head, much narrower than rest of thorax, and scarcely
longer than wide. Wings well developed, abortive, or absent. Elytra longer or
shorter than the body. not closely joined in the middle, even overlapping, and
widely divergent apically. Legs long and slender. Tarsi long, five-segmented.
Anterior and middle cOXa! large and contiguous. Abdomen often with the posterior
segments exposed and with six visible siemites.
These beetles have a complex development known as hypermetamorphosis.
The very minute eggs are laid in great numbers in masses in the soil. The newly
hatched young, called primary larvre or triungulins, are minute and campodeiform
with well-developed legs, antennre, and cerci. They are very active and
seek out egg masses or brood chambers of ground-nesting insects, or they may
actually attach themselves to certain adult hosts and ride to the nests or brood
chambers of the latter. Here they feed upon the honey or food stored" for the
host larvre or are predacious upon the latter. But very shortly they transform
into apodous, sluggish, scarabreoid type of larvre and remain until fully developed,
passing, in some cases, into still a third type of larval and into a I;lrepupa,
a pupa, and finally into an adult.
The charming sketch by Fabre (1857) describes the life history of the European
Sitart's muralis Forster, a small black and yellow beetle 8-10 mm. long
which develops in nests of bees belonging to the genus Anthophora. The eggs
are laid near the ground nests of the bees during late summer and hatch in the