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Sticker of Fan-shaped fire-colored beetle
Bug card No. 1636 of 4,939

Fan-shaped fire-colored beetle

Neopyrochroa flabellata
Eats: Fungus and mouldBeetlesForests and woods6 legs

The fan-shaped fire-colored beetle belongs to the fire-coloured beetles, a family of beetles often dressed in bright red and orange. It lives in the eastern United States. Its larvae grow up hidden inside dead wood.

Lives in
The eastern United States, in woods with dead trees
Top speed
about 0.5 km/h (0.31 mph)
On foot, estimate
Can it hurt you?
Harmless
Harmless. It is not known to hurt people.
What does it eat?
Its larvae live in dead wood and eat the fungus growing there, not the wood itself. The adults hardly eat at all.
For real!Photo of Fan-shaped fire-colored beetle
Picture by skitterbug. CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

How fast is it?

cool stuff

Fun facts

1

Its larvae live inside dead wood, but they eat fungus instead of wood.

2

The grown-up beetles very rarely eat.

3

It is drawn to a special chemical called cantharidin, which some other beetles make.

you asked

Most asked questions about Fan-shaped fire-colored beetle

?What does the fan-shaped fire-colored beetle eat?

Its larvae eat fungus in dead wood. The adults rarely eat.

?Where does the fan-shaped fire-colored beetle live?

In the eastern United States.

For bug experts

Scientific name
Neopyrochroa flabellata
Group
Beetles
Family
Pyrochroidae
Classification
Insecta > Coleoptera > Pyrochroidae
Lives on
North America

Where the facts come from

  1. Neopyrochroa flabellata (Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0): what it looks like, where it lives, what it eats, sizes and fun facts, retold in simple words.
  2. Picture by skitterbug. CC BY 4.0, 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.

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More from the same group: Beetles

Also at home here: Forests and woods

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