Things I Get To I.D. At Work

Another find on my Jarrahdale visit, and one that made me very happy. It’s not often I come across an entire family of beetles I haven’t seen before. Or at least, a family I haven’t seen before and can actually recognise at a glance - there’s a great many tiny beetles that can only be distinguished by an expert, after all.

Pin-tailed Beetles, aka Tumbling Flower Beetles, are small insects of the family Mordellidae. The common names come from their long tapered abdomen, and their ability to turn somersaults during an escape from predators. They use a hind leg for the leap, however - the long pin-tail isn’t involved, oddly.

The larvae have a variety of diets - dead and dying trees, pith, galls made by other insects, other insects, fungi, and so on.

Photo by Garlone Moulin in Bogie North Queensland.

[PHOTOS TAKEN: MAY 29TH, 2025 | Image IDs: Six photos of a yellow flower with a black tumbling flower beetle and a brown and black tarnished plant bug, both feeding from the flower /End IDs.]

A species of Tumbling Flower Beetle, usually seen on flowers, and often on Verticordia. If disturbed they tumble off the flower and play dead. However, their attempts to take off and fly can be pretty acrobatic, too. Another common name for the family in Pintail Beetles - note the pointy butt.

Endemic to the WA Wheatbelt, although these days usually only in the reserves where the native plants flower in staggering profusion in spring.

there's no party like a mordellid party. i don't find big gatherings like this often, but they can be easier to photograph than individuals, who are more reactive when they have nothing else to occupy themselves with. on the other hand, if you do spook one or two, you'll cause a chain reaction and find out why they're called tumbling beetles, as you're left with an empty flower in seconds

The Heart-Leaf Buckwheat, Eriogonum compositum, being visited by tumbling flower beetles, of Mordella sp

Tumbling Flower Beetle (Mordella rufomaculata), family Mordellidae, Costa Rica

#365Insects 14: #Sylvicola fenestralis (Scopoli, 1763)

Bug of the Day

Small flies in the small Anisopodidae family -  AKA window-gnats.  154 described living species, 15 genera, and several described fossil taxa.

A Wood Gnat found in SE Australia and New Zealand, from a genus with at least 80 species. The Anisopodidae are small to medium-sized flies usually, and at least for those species where the diet is known, saprophages and mycetovores.