Spotted maize beetle
The spotted maize beetle is a soft, leathery beetle with yellow-orange wing cases and big black blotches. It comes from Argentina, but it has travelled to South Africa by accident. It loves to crowd onto flowers and eat their pollen.
How big is it?
How long is it?
How big is Spotted maize beetle compared to YOU?
Just maths in your browser. Nothing is saved or sent anywhere.
How fast is it?
Fun facts
It can help sunflowers by carrying their pollen, maybe more than it harms them.
Its larvae are covered in long, silky brown to reddish hairs.
On busy days, lots of beetles crowd onto the same flower heads at certain times of the day.
In South Africa its larvae even eat some of the caterpillars that bore into maize stems.
Most asked questions about Spotted maize beetle
?Is the spotted maize beetle poisonous?
Yes, if eaten. Farm animals that swallow many of them can get very sick, so farmers keep cows away when the beetles are everywhere.
?What does the spotted maize beetle eat?
Mostly pollen from maize, sorghum and other grain plants.
For bug experts
- Scientific name
- Astylus atromaculatus
- Group
- Beetles
- Family
- Melyridae
- Classification
- Insecta > Coleoptera > Melyridae
- Lives on
- South America, Africa
- Also known as
- Pollen beetle
Where the facts come from
- Astylus atromaculatus (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 Coetzesn. CC BY-SA 3.0, Wikimedia Commons. The sticker of this bug is drawn from this picture.
If we got something wrong, sorry, we are bug fans, not a science journal. Tell us at [email protected] and we will fix it.
Bug Wiki honey jar For grown-ups: Bug Wiki is free, with no ads and no tracking. A small tip helps keep it online.Leave a tip
Stag beetle
Hercules beetle
Common glow-worm
Goliath beetle
Cockchafer
Mealworm beetle
Metallic blue lady beetle
Eastern ten-spotted ladybug
Yellow-green austral-nomia
Monarch butterfly
European mantis
Garden snail