#1583 - Cardiothorax sp.
Photo by John-Michiel Koens, who found this this bizarre creature in Toowoomba, QLD, and sent the photo to me for ID. My reaction was “..... what the FUCK is that?”
Practically everybody else that had a look at it was stumped as well, with suggestions ranging from unusual earwig, to dipluran, to caddisfly, to female embiopteran, to a Carabid or Staphylinid beetle larva, with general consensus converging on Carab. Trying to figure out what it was was certainly a puzzle - the two prongs on the rear are called ‘urogomphi’, by the way.
Eventually, after a few dozen entomologists had a look at it and scratched their heads, an expert on Carabid beetles got back to us (via an expert on stiletto flies), to tell us that it wasn’t a Carabid after all - he’d once reared one to adulthood to discover that it was actually a comparatively ordinary-looking Tenebrionid beetle, with a heart-shaped thorax. They live among leaf litter eating plant material.
And thus I learning a truism among entomologists - if you have an unusual beetle larva to ID, nine times out of ten it’ll be a Tenebrionid.
And yesterday I got sent this photo by Iskander Kaliananda - a Cardiothorax larva infected with Beauveria fungus.