Red net-winged beetle (Dictyoptera simplicipes)
This week’s crawly is one stand-out beetle. Meet the red net-winged beetle (Dictyoptera simplicipes).
Even their diminutive size (just over one-quarter of an inch) doesn’t prevent these fire engine red beetles from being easily spotted.
That said, they are fairly uncommon in Oregon (this one was hanging out by a creek on Laurelhurst Rd. in Trail). Out of 80 species of net-winged beetles in North America, Oregon has two, so it’s not surprising there are only 161 recorded sightings of these bright red beauties.
Our second species is Punicealis hamata and looks nearly identical to our red net-winged beetle, except their pronotum (the shield-like cover just behind their head) is solid red while the red-net winged’s has a dark center.
Throughout North America net-winged beetles come in a variety of colors and patterns, most of them bold.
How can a bitty beetle that would make a tasty snack for a variety of birds, reptiles and even other arthropods afford to sport a scarlet exoskeleton?
Net-winged beetles’ literally ooze grossness. Those lovely lacy lines on the net-winged’s wing covers are filled with a combination of hemolymph and pyrazines.
What and what, now?
Hemolymph is the arthropod equivalent of blood – the sticky substance left on your car’s windshield when the unlucky bug collides with it.
Pyrazines are aromatic compounds. The ones found in wine give it a bell pepper odor. The ones in net-winged beetles give them a foul odor and worse taste.
So our red net-winged beetle’s vibrant color is an example of aposematic coloration, which is a fancy way of saying that their bright color stands as a warning to potential predators that they are a toxic snack, not a tasty one.
Unfortunately for some red net-winged beetles, predators sometimes have to learn the hard way that “red means stop!” Luckily for the rest of the net-winged beetles, a predator won’t make the same mistake twice.
Because their warning coloration works most of the time, net-winged beetles are pretty chill, making them easy to observe and photograph. They can fly but are weak flyers and will just as often meander along looking for food or love.
Adult net-winged forage for flower nectar, so they are pollinators.
Their funky-looking larvae (imagine a teeny accordion with a triangle on both ends) live and grow up in rotting wood. They’re quite flat and built for life under bark or in small woody crevasses. The larvae dine on slime mold and fungi, helping to break down rotting logs and branches and get key nutrients back into soils.
When a group of net-winged larvae are ready to morph into their winged adult form, they will gather together in a cluster on the outside of their tree trunk home. Even though the young net-winged sport aposematic coloration and taste foul, they still believe in “safety in numbers” during that vulnerable time when they pupate.
A large group of brightly colored and striped mini accordions on a tree trunk would definitely confuse the heck out of a passing predator.
There’s still time to find a racy red net-winged beetle this year. They prefer wooded areas because they need those rotting logs, so look for a meandering bit of scarlet while you’re out hiking in the Cascades.