As long as I was on the topic of beetles, I thought I’d include this one which my husband photographed on Mt. Ashland in August during one of our wildflower walks.

The best resource I have found for identifying insects, if they are not among those illustrated in our insect field guides, is by using BugGuide.net. If you can narrow your search down, you may be able to identify it yourself by looking through the extensive pages of thumbnail photos for each group, genus, and species. That is how I figured out what this was,

a spider named Cyclosa conica, for an earlier post—but I had to scan through dozens of pages of thumbnails to find this particular individual.

There’s another way: submit at least one good photo of the insect or arachnid in question to bugguide.net, with relevant details such as geographic location, time of year you saw it, and where (in your attic? under a log? on a rose bush?). Then a group of people who know lots more about bugs than you or I, will take a look, there will be perhaps some back and forth, and you’ll probably get a consensus. Before posting your photos you need to register an account with username and password, then after that you can log in and look at your photos and see what has been said about them.

BugGuide.net is hosted by Iowa State University Entomology, and a lot of the responders are extremely knowledgeable. Also, it is a collegial effort—they check each other’s work, in effect. But of course if the answer is really important to you: if this spider just bit you and your arm is swelling, or you have an orchard infestation of some bug, you want to talk to a real live person like a doctor or an ag extension agent. Try to get the bug into a little jar and take it with you.

This is a fun and educational site to browse through. There are pages of many-legged creatures awaiting identification (the better your photo, the better your chances, but send the photos you have), and of course a structure of pages organized by taxonomy, order/family/genus. Even better, on the left of each page is a visual key, a clickable guide composed of bugs by shape, to help you get close to the creature you are interested in.

The big red bug was not in our guides so I submitted it and got a precise ID. It is a Desmocerus aureipennis/auripennis, male. The females don’t have the bright red elytra, or wing covers. It’s one of a group called Elderberry Longhorn Beetles, and our photo showed it on that tree. I looked up other photos of this insect and yes, that’s what it is.

[Etymological note: desmocerus from the Greek desmos (banded or fettered) + keros (a horn) and aureipennis from the Latin aureus (golden) + penna (feather, wing).]