REVIEW
DUELLING
JEWELS
Tim Low
S
tag beetles are revered in Europe
and Japan as the ultimate in beetles
because some are so large and
possess imposing mandibles, which
males deploy in fights over females.
In Japan, which has hundreds of
thousands of stag beetle fans, they sell
in department stores as ideal pets for
small apartments. Rare breeds (‘black
diamonds’) change hands for thousands
of dollars.
Australia has many impressive beetles
that would make alluring pets – massive
longicorns, stunning jewel beetles, and
giant scarabs, including rhinoceros
beetles, which also joust with horns.
At Sydney airport in 2003 two Japanese
collectors were caught with more than
a thousand larvae and adults of the
beautiful green Lord Howe stag beetle
(Lamprima insularis), having destroyed
many logs in the island’s national park
to procure them. Another rare Australian
species, which is drab brown, has been
offered for sale online for $10,000. It
could only have been smuggled out of
a national park, although many other
Australian species are bred in Asia for the
pet trade.
Blue, green and most
colours in-between
Now that Australia has a comprehensive
field guide, perhaps stag beetles will
win more admirers here. More attention
should be paid to the king stag beetle
(Phalacrognathus muelleri) of north
Queensland,
for the authors claim it is, ‘Undoubtedly ...
our finest Australian beetle’. Its size, long
antler-like mandibles and dramatic green
iridescence certainly commend it. The
smaller Lamprima stag beetles can have
lovely green or blue iridescence, and the
brown stag beetle (Ryssonotus nebulosus)
is strikingly sculptured and marked. I
have it as one of the banner photos on
my website. It has become established
in New Zealand, presumably as a
stowaway with timber.
Stag beetles are considered a
very old group, with origins that
may date back 160 million
years to the Jurassic. Some
Australian beetle groups also
have interesting Gondwanan
distributions. The standouts are
two in Queensland that have their
nearest relatives in South America:
one (Australognathus munchowae) is
confined to wet eucalypt forest on
two separated sandstone plateaux,
Blackdown Tableland and Carnarvon
National Park, in central Queensland, and
the other (A. queenslandicus) to the high
altitude Wet Tropics rainforests of Mount
Lewis and Mt Carbine, 950 km away.
Their relict distribution is quirkier than
most, but beetles like these must once
have prospered in wet habitats across
Australia, Antarctica and South America,
tens of millions of years ago when these
continents were still joined. Many species
have minute distributions, a result of wet
forests in Australia reducing to islands
of habitat as the climate dried. Genus
Hoplogonus has three species, all confined
to wet forests in north-eastern
Tasmania, all threatened
by development.In north
Queensland,
Lissapterus ogivus keeps to
rainforest atop Mt Elliot near Townsville,
and L. darlingtoni to the lofty summits
of Mount Bartle Frere and Bellenden
Ker. Another species, Ceratognathus
abdominalis, is only known from one
female collected in 1870 in ‘Moreton Bay’.
With more than a million people living on
the edge of Moreton Bay today, the lack
of further records might seem worrying,
but this beetle is only 5 mm long and, like
most stag beetles, spends most of its life
inside logs.
This book provides very detailed
descriptions of each stag beetle species
and instructive photos of them and
some of their habitats. Distributions are
described, rather than shown on maps,
and no common names are provided for
most species, many of which are small
and drab. Life history information is
given, where it exists, some of it sourced
from the Asian pet trade. While this guide
is as complete as it can be, the authors
note that some small brown species andA male king
stag beetle
(Phalacrognathus
muelleri). These
beetles are
sometimes also
known as ‘rainbow
beetles’. Photo:
Roger de Keyzer
Brown stag beetle,
Ryssonotus nebulosus.
Photo: Roger de Keyzer46 | Wildlife Australia | SPRING 2017