Can Anyone Identity this Small Flying Beetle?

[xpatUSA]

About 3/8" long. Stinky if picked up. Congregate in flat sheltered spaces like door jambs, plywood sheets and so forth. Most are brown but occasionally there is a green one. Can't recover if inverted on a flat surface. Way too many this year, grump!

Location about 60 miles West of Houston, TX.

Fancy biological name would nice ...

[lesno1]

Probably some sort of Stink bug Ted

[Ken MT]

Try this
https://www.si.edu/spotlight/buginfo/bugnos

Japanese Beetle, Scarab Beetle?

[DanK]

Japanese beetles are green on the thorax and down the middle of the their backs, https://www.botanicgardens.org/blog/...ontrol-release. These don't look like that. I immediately wondered about stink bugs, with which I have no experience, but the images online for stinkbugs don't look like this.

Given where you live and your comments about how unpleasant these are, I was tempted to make up a fake Latin name including the letters c_r_u_z but decided it would be inappropriate in this forum.

[xpatUSA]

Japanese beetles are green on the thorax and down the middle of the their backs, https://www.botanicgardens.org/blog/...ontrol-release. These don't look like that. I immediately wondered about stink bugs, with which I have no experience, but the images online for stinkbugs don't look like this.

Thanks for looking. Yes, we also have those big stink bugs, aka Shield Bugs and they are truly stinky!

[Geoff F]

Looks more like beetles than bugs from what I can see.

Beetles have a hard covering (elytra) over the wings and biting mouthparts. (Yes, there are exceptions to the elytra length etc). Bugs have wings which may be tough and leathery at the base but more delicate with obvious veins towards the tip and usually a backward pointing triangular scutellum. Their mouthparts are a long feeding tube, but this can be shorter in some species.

However, I struggle to identify many of the UK beetles so I am not going to attempt identification of American species.

[xpatUSA]

A green one showed up - pardon the hand-held snaps:

[davidedric]

That is surely a shield bug, but since there are almost 5,000 species worldwide I'm not going to attempt an i.d.!

[DanK]

I don’t know if this is apocryphal, but there’s a story that E. O. Wilson, he renowned biologist who died very recently, once quipped about the huge number of species of beetles: I don’t know whether this is a God, but if there is, she must have an inordinate love of beetles.


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[xpatUSA]

That is surely a shield bug, but since there are almost 5,000 species worldwide I'm not going to attempt an i.d.!

Thanks, Dave!

Following on from "shield bug", the green one looks like Chinavia hilaris except ours are smaller c.10mm vs. 13 to 18mm.

It looks quite a bit different from the brown ones in the OP - more pronounced shoulders. I'll say different genus ...

As I seek more info, I realize that I need undamaged specimens and much better pics!

[davidedric]

Sorry to be pedantic, but it was JBS Haldane who made the beetles quip. EO Wilson was the ant man. But it's all a bit anecdotal.

I don’t know if this is apocryphal, but there’s a story that E. O. Wilson, he renowned biologist who died very recently, once quipped about the huge number of species of beetles: I don’t know whether this is a God, but if there is, she must have an inordinate love of beetles.


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[DanK]

That explains why I couldn't find it in a bunch of EO Wilson quotes.

[Wavelength]

Thanks for looking. Yes, we also have those big stink bugs, aka Shield Bugs and they are truly stinky!

Liked it very much