Cosmopolitan diving beetle
The cosmopolitan diving beetle is a brown water beetle that swims like a little submarine. It lives in small ponds and puddles in many parts of the world. It is such a good traveller that people call it the supertramp beetle.
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Fun facts
It even moves into garden ponds, water butts and puddles in muddy tyre tracks.
When its larva is ready to change, it climbs out of the water and digs a little room in the mud.
The pupa has stiff hairs that keep it from touching the mud, so it stays clean and gets fresh air.
The grown-up beetles live all year round, and they spend the winter under water.
Its larvae grow up fast: they are grown in only about three weeks.
Most asked questions about Cosmopolitan diving beetle
?What does the cosmopolitan diving beetle eat?
Mostly mosquito larvae, plus midge larvae and water fleas.
?Where can you find a cosmopolitan diving beetle?
In small ponds and pools with few plants, even in garden ponds and puddles.
?How big is the cosmopolitan diving beetle?
About 10 to 13 millimetres long, about as long as a fingernail.
For bug experts
- Scientific name
- Rhantus suturalis
- Group
- Beetles
- Family
- Dytiscidae
- Classification
- Insecta > Coleoptera > Dytiscidae
- Lives on
- Europe, Asia, Africa, Australia and Oceania
- Also known as
- Supertramp beetle
Where the facts come from
- Rhantus suturalis (Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0): what it looks like, where it lives, what it eats, sizes and fun facts, retold in simple words.
- Picture by Ben Sale from UK. CC BY 2.0, Wikimedia Commons. The sticker of this bug is drawn from this picture.
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