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Sticker of Four-spotted fungus beetle
Bug card No. 1752 of 4,939

Four-spotted fungus beetle

Ischyrus quadripunctatus
Eats: Fungus and mouldBeetlesForests and woods6 legs

The four-spotted fungus beetle is a small, shiny beetle with a black and pale orange pattern. Just behind its head it has four black spots in a row. It belongs to the pleasing fungus beetles, a family of beetles that live on mushrooms.

Lives in
The Americas, from southern Canada to Paraguay and northern Argentina
Length
5 to 9 mm (0.2 to 0.35 in)
Top speed
about 0.39 km/h (0.24 mph)
On foot, estimate
Can it hurt you?
Harmless
Harmless. It does not bite or sting.
What does it eat?
Like other pleasing fungus beetles, it feeds on fungi.
For real!Photo of Four-spotted fungus beetle
Picture by Christina Butler from Georgia, United States. CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

How big is it?

How long is it?

Four-spotted fungus beetle about 9 mm long (0.35 in)A grain of rice about 6 mm (0.24 in)A toy building brick about 3.2 cm (1.3 in)
small enough to sit on your fingernailas long as 1.5 grains of rice in a rowcould run across a dinner table in 9.2 seconds

How big is Four-spotted fungus beetle compared to YOU?

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How fast is it?

cool stuff

Fun facts

1

Males can squeak by wiggling their heads, which rubs a tiny file against their shell.

2

Its shell starts out dull and gets shinier and shinier as it wears down in old age.

3

It lives in a huge area, from southern Canada all the way to Argentina.

4

Its black markings and orange colour can look a little different from place to place.

you asked

Most asked questions about Four-spotted fungus beetle

?Is the four-spotted fungus beetle dangerous?

No. It is a small harmless beetle.

?How big is the four-spotted fungus beetle?

It is about 5 to 9 millimetres long, around the size of a fingernail on your little finger.

For bug experts

Scientific name
Ischyrus quadripunctatus
Group
Beetles
Family
Erotylidae
Classification
Insecta > Coleoptera > Erotylidae
Lives on
North America, South America
Also known as
Four-spotted pleasing fungus beetle

Where the facts come from

  1. Ischyrus quadripunctatus (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 Christina Butler from Georgia, United States. CC BY 2.0, 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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