Category: Invertebrates

Xylotoles griseus

These animals are about 10 mm long and are just one of around 180 species of longhorn beetles in New Zealand. Longhorn beetles are named for their very long antennae. James Tweed on iNaturalist assigned the genus and suggested griseus as the likely species. It was named back in 1775 by Fabricius, who travelled from Copenhagen to Britain regularly and studied the collections of Joseph Banks among others, so the earliest scientific collection of this beetle was on Cook’s first voyage.

Xylotoles is a mainly New Zealand genus and species griseus is native here and widely distributed around the country, but it also showed up when a fig tree was felled in Devon in 2014. I’m not sure how that means it gets to be called the Fig Longhorn if it was collected here in the 1700s.

Longhorn beetles feed on flowers, leaves and bark, and the grubs tunnel into live or dead timber. Some species are regarded as pests because of this. Longhorn beetle grubs, including huhu of course, are widely eaten by people around the world.

This isn’t the only longhorn beetle on Puangiangi and another quite distinct one is coming up soon. Apart from the flightless, threatened species like giant weta and some of the Anagotus weevils, these articles won’t cover species of outstanding significance. Rather, the animals will be documented as I photograph them and help to build a picture of the commoner invertebrates on the island. On that note, Ian Millar summarised the insect and spider fauna as being like a subset of that on adjacent D’Urville, save for species more often found in beech forest, which Puangiangi lacks.

Adoxellus flavihirtus

This 3mm ladybird showed up during two summertime invertebrate surveys by Ian and Anne Millar. I photographed it this winter. Sean Clifford over on iNaturalist suggested the exact identification and to an amateur like me it certainly looks like the animal described in detail by Nicholas Martin of Plant and Food Research.

The yellow-haired ladybird is endemic to New Zealand and it’s said to be widespread but not commonly seen. They are quite common on tree trunks at night on Puangiangi. I haven’t seen them eating anything as yet.

Andrew Crowe in Which New Zealand Insect? says there are about 40 species of ladybird here, more than half of them native. The only other one I have seen on the island so far is the Large Spotted Ladybird, introduced from Australia.

By the way, these insect and spider identifications will mostly be tentative and I’ll be very pleased to hear from anyone who knows differently.