Dennis Padul | What Are These Creatures: Hercules Beetle Larva @DennisPadul | Uploaded 6 years ago | Updated 7 minutes ago
The Hercules beetle (Dynastes hercules, Dynastinae) is a species of rhinoceros beetle native to the rainforests of Central America, South America, and the Lesser Antilles, and is the longest extant species of beetle in the world, and is also one of the largest flying insects in the world.
Adult body sizes vary between 50 and 85 mm in length and 29 and 42 mm in width, though male Hercules beetles may reach up to 175 mm in length (including the horn), making them the longest species of beetle in the world. The size of this horn is naturally very variable; more so than any variation of the size of legs, wings, or overall body size in the species. This variability results from developmental mechanisms that couple genetic predisposition with nutrition, stress, exposure to parasites, and/or physiological conditions.
The body of males is black with the exception of the elytra, which can have shades of olive-green. They have a black suture with sparsely distributed black spots elsewhere on the elytra. D. hercules is highly sexually dimorphic, with only males exhibiting the characteristic horn. They have a slightly iridescent colouration to their elytra, which varies in colour between specimens and may be affected by the humidity of the local environment in which they develop. At low humidity the elytra are olive-green or yellow in colour, but darken to black at higher humidity due to changes in light refraction.
Females of D. hercules have punctured elytra which are usually entirely black, but sometimes have the last quarter coloured in the same way as the males.
Source https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hercules_beetle
The Hercules beetle (Dynastes hercules, Dynastinae) is a species of rhinoceros beetle native to the rainforests of Central America, South America, and the Lesser Antilles, and is the longest extant species of beetle in the world, and is also one of the largest flying insects in the world.
Adult body sizes vary between 50 and 85 mm in length and 29 and 42 mm in width, though male Hercules beetles may reach up to 175 mm in length (including the horn), making them the longest species of beetle in the world. The size of this horn is naturally very variable; more so than any variation of the size of legs, wings, or overall body size in the species. This variability results from developmental mechanisms that couple genetic predisposition with nutrition, stress, exposure to parasites, and/or physiological conditions.
The body of males is black with the exception of the elytra, which can have shades of olive-green. They have a black suture with sparsely distributed black spots elsewhere on the elytra. D. hercules is highly sexually dimorphic, with only males exhibiting the characteristic horn. They have a slightly iridescent colouration to their elytra, which varies in colour between specimens and may be affected by the humidity of the local environment in which they develop. At low humidity the elytra are olive-green or yellow in colour, but darken to black at higher humidity due to changes in light refraction.
Females of D. hercules have punctured elytra which are usually entirely black, but sometimes have the last quarter coloured in the same way as the males.
Source https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hercules_beetle
