The other night when I took the dogs for a walk, I noticed these beetles on these flowers. I hoped that they would be on the flowers during the day so I could take a photo. This is either Oxythyrea abigail or Oxythyrea noemi; the only way to tell is by the arrangement of the spots on their backs. After about 20 minutes of going back and forth between my photo and the example photos I couldn't tell, so obviously I am not a bug person. What I DO know, and found very interesting is that they eat the pollen on the flowers. I have only seen these guys on these types of flowers which are wildflowers here in Cyprus. Some types of these beetles feed on fruit tree pollen!
As I watched this little guy forage, it was like watching a vacuum cleaner! He was very methodical, and if you look closely at the photo, you can see the one stamen which has pollen left on it. He has cleaned the rest completely!
fascinating - so the pollen gets distributed through the beetle dung presumably. Flower and beetle both happy. Lovely to see nature at work here and the photograph shows your vacuum cleaning beetle with lovely detail.
