Beetles need i.d.

[bugmankeith]

What types of beetles are these? They are both the same size (small) and swarm at night towards lights and love to eat sunflower leaves, and eat flower pollen.

Their not the color of japanese beetles, and are much smaller than the large june beetles, and every book I look in doesnt mention them at all. Only once have I found one that was all black and otherwise the same body as these 2.

 

[Ted]

cant tell from the pics..looks like scarab of some sort..a flower feeding one, possibly.

 

[BeetleExperienc]

Rutelinae...

Rutelinae, possibly: Anomala orientalis

http://bugguide.net/node/view/26879/bgimage

(the second one. Can't tell what the first one is but probably Phyllophaga - "May/June Beetles")

 

[bugmankeith]

Yep the gold is the Oriental Beetle, and they can be black in color, so that solves that.

By chance I just found the i.d. for the brown one, the Asiatic Garden Beetle. Introduced here in the 1920's.

Funny, we get no Japanese Beetles here.

 

[BeetleExperienc]

Japanese beetles

Bugmankeith,

Consider yourself lucky. They haven't reached Louisiana yet but when I visit relatives in North Carolina they seem to have taken over.

 

[myrmecophile]

The solid brown scarab actually looks more like a Serica species. They are very very difficult to identify to species even with a specimen in hand so there is little hope of getting this one to species.

 

[bugmankeith]

Bugmankeith,

Consider yourself lucky. The Japanese beetles haven't reached Louisiana yet but when I visit relatives in North Carolina they seem to have taken over.


Actually they are everywhere upstate NY,by the hundreds on plants, just not anywhere on Long Island where I live, at least I havent seen any in my area?

The solid brown scarab actually looks more like a Serica species. They are very very difficult to identify to species even with a specimen in hand so there is little hope of getting this one to species.

All the sites i've checked (mostly for garden pests) seem to match this beetles behavior and i.d. to a T, and they all call it the Asiatic Garden beetle. They even say they are abundant on Long Island and feed at night and are attracted to porch lights, sounds exactly like the beetles I find. We do have the larger brown June Beetles, but they have more hair than these so I know thats not what the tiny ones are.

Bug guide had a very similar image, so this could be a possibility aswell.

http://bugguide.net/node/view/21351

 

[myrmecophile]

I would bet it is not Phyllophaga pretty sure of that, however I concur that it could be the invasive species, the image does make it tough to tell for certainty.