Small piston water beetle
| Small piston water beetle | ||||||||||||
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Small piston water beetle ( Hydrochara caraboides ) |
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| Systematics | ||||||||||||
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| Scientific name | ||||||||||||
| Hydrochara caraboides | ||||||||||||
| ( Linnaeus , 1758) |
The Small piston water beetles or sting water beetles ( Hydro Chara caraboides ) is a beetle from the family of water beetles (Hydrophilidae).
features
The beetles reach a body length of 14 to 18 millimeters. Their oval body is glossy black and has a more or less strong greenish tinge. There are seldom emerald green, very rarely yellow-brown colored individuals. The body surface is finely structured with dots and has fine longitudinal rows and rows of larger dots. The base of the pronotum is straight. The palps and the basal part of the antennae are yellow. The keel of the prothorax is thorn-shaped drawn out backwards, that of the metathorax ends behind the hips ( coxae ) of the hind legs.
Similar species
Occurrence and way of life
The animals occur in the Palearctic as far as central Sweden , the south of Norway and Finland . In England they are only widespread in places. You can find them in small pools, ponds and dead tributaries of rivers, from the lowlands to the hilly, sometimes also in the mountains. They were once common, but are now very rare. Eggs are laid in cocoons, as can also be observed in the large piston water beetle . The predatory larvae live near the water surface and digest their prey above the water.
swell
literature
- Edmund Reitter : Fauna Germanica - The beetles of the German Empire. Volume 2 p. 359, KG Lutz, Stuttgart 1912
- Edmund Reitter: Fauna Germanica - The beetles of the German Empire. 5 volumes, Stuttgart KG Lutz 1908–1916, digital library volume 134, Directmedia Publishing GmbH, Berlin 2006, ISBN 3-898-53534-7
- Jiři Zahradnik, Irmgard Jung, Dieter Jung et al .: Beetles of Central and Northwestern Europe. Parey, Berlin 1985, ISBN 3-490-27118-1 .
