The Atavism

Sunday, June 12, 2011

Sunday Spinelessness - Razor-back

The photos I share here are really not representative sample of the bugs I come across in my travels. For me to get photos of a bug I need to get pretty close to it, and that means i can't get nice pictures of creatures that are skittish or particularly fast moving. For instance, there's a longhorn beetle (Cerambycidae) species I find quite often in Dunedin but have never taken a nice photo of, because every time I line one up the subject runs out of frame or out of focus.

Even though I've never taken a good photo of this beetle, I do have one that displays it's most unusual feature. It has two ridges growing out of it's back:

I can't imagine what, if any, purpose those protuberances serve, but i quite like them. Their spikiness, and their shape makes me think of tiny little circular saw blades sticking out of a saw bench.

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Posted by David Winter 10:24 PM

3 Comments:

I study this family, and as far as I know there are no hypotheses about the function of these hair tufts. You can find them across a number of taxa in the subfamily this species belongs to (Lamiinae), and they certainly make for some interesting appearances.
regards--ted
I study this family, and as far as I know there are no hypotheses about the function of these hair tufts. You can find them across a number of taxa in the subfamily this species belongs to (Lamiinae), and they certainly make for some interesting appearances.
regards--ted
sorry for the duplicate comment - Blogger always makes it difficult for OpenID users to comment.

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