American Carrion Beetle Larva (Necrophila Americana)
Tentative ID, but looks like the most likely candidate! Thanks to Pudding4brains for the help!
Jason took a cellphone video of this strange creature at our mixed forest edge. It was rather large! Screen captures above.
Video below:
The American carrion beetle is a North American beetle of the family Silphidae. It lays its eggs in, and its larvae consume, raw flesh and fungi. The larvae and adults also consume fly larvae and the larvae of other carrion beetles that compete for the same food sources as its larvae.
Similar species: Beetles
By Flown Kimmerling
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Uploaded May 23, 2021. Captured in 227 Oakman Rd NE, Oakman, GA 30732, USA.
comments (2)
Yes, it is a Silphidae, subfamily Silphinae. It is quite short and stout compared to our European larvae. Candidates to eliminate would be:
Aclypea (2 spp)
Heterosilpha aenescens
Heterosilpha ramosa - Garden Carrion Beetle
Necrodes surinamensis
Necrophila americana
Oiceoptoma (3 spp)
Silpha tristis
Thanatophilus (5 spp)
I can easily eliminate these:
Silpha tristis: Wrong habitus; More slender, longer antennae, pale tips of the (pseudo)epimera
Aclypea opaca: Comes closer in general apearance, but the habitus of yours is to short/wide.
Thanatophilus spp: Hairy all over and urogomphi much longer
Necrodes surinamensis: Very different habitus (slender, higher) and more coloured
As for the others:
Aclypea bituberosa: As the name "Western Spinach Carrion Beetle" suggests, the data that I have for it puts it out of range for GA. Also, the habitus of the Aclypea I know is sufficiently different. Let's drop that one.
Oiceoptoma spp. I only know the larva of our European Oiceoptoma and that is sufficiently different. The very few images I can find of your US species look a _lot_ like ours, so I'm dropping these. On a side note: Of the US species Oiceoptoma inaequale and Oiceoptoma rugulosum should be within range. Oiceoptoma rugulosum is said to be of forensic importance, so it's quite baffling to me that there are no images to be found?!?
Heterosilpha spp.: A genus unknown to me(!), but should be close to Silpha. The images/info I find for Heterosilpha-larvae (ramosa mostly) also shows great similarity to our Silpha spp (more slender, epimera not pulled back so strongly, longer antennae). I'm fairly confident we should be allowed to drop these too.
That pretty much leaves us with Necrophila americana (unknown to me as well). The range fits and it's a common beetle within that range. BugGuide has a few images where this species is suggested and that are a perfect match for yours. On the other hand, searching for "Necrophila americana Larva" I find a lot of images that IMHO look much more like Silpha/Heterosilpha. I'm boldly suggesting those are probably all bogus IDs (the internet is full of that). Bugguide has a few of these too, like here: https://bugguide.net/node/view/1670977/bgimage
So, with some appropriate disclaimers about me being from Barcelona, not knowing nothing etc. etc, I'd say that in the end our only likely candidate really would be Necrophila americana Posted 4 years ago, modified 4 years ago
Necrophila americana makes complete sense considering it is the only carrion beetle I've ever seen in the South :D I'll go ahead and change the ID here and on iNaturalist (with a "tentative" disclaimer) :) Posted 4 years ago