- Animals
- ›Arthropods
- ›Hexapods
- ›Insects
- ›Winged and Once-winged Insects
- ›Beetles
- ›Ground and Water Beetles
- ›Ground beetles and allies
- ›Ground Beetles
- ›Broscinae
- ›Broscini
- ›Nothobroscina
- ›Mecodema
Mecodema scitulum
Mecodema scitulum is a species of endemic New Zealand flightless beetle in the family Carabidae. It was first described by Thomas Broun, in 1984, from a single specimen that he received from the Edwin Mitchelson. This species then became a junior synonym of Mecodema spiniferum after Everard B. Britton completed his revision of the New Zealand Broscini in 1949. Like Broun, Britton based this synonymy on the only specimen available, the holotype, because of the confusion surrounding the type locality where M. scitulum was collected from. However, D.S. Seldon and T.R. Buckley (2019) reinstated the species M. scitulum based on the morphological comparisons of 30+ specimens with the holotype and molecular analyses.
From the article Mecodema scitulum on Wikipedia (CC BY-SA), quoted section by section
Description
The range of lengths is 22–26.5 mm and the width range (elytra) is 6–7 mm. The colour of the entire body is matte black.
In human culture
This species is found in regenerating native forest in the northern parts of the Hunua Ranges (e.g., Mataitai Forest), but it may be also present in some of the forest fragments around and north of Clevedon, Auckland, New Zealand. Mecodema scitulum is a nocturnal predator on the forest floor and preys on a range of different invertebrates (e.g., worms, caterpillars, etc.).
Wikipedia: “Natural history”
Listen
Looking for field recordings…
Where it lives
Recorded sightings
—
geo-referenced records in GBIF, from museums, herbaria and field observers.
Drag the globe to turn it. Dots are where records exist, not a range map; darker means more records.
In the stacks
Searching the stacks…
Every page naming Mecodema scitulum in the Biodiversity Heritage Library →
This page is assembled live from iNaturalist, GBIF, Wikipedia, the Source Library and the Internet Archive. It is not yet part of the hand-edited codex. iNaturalist taxon 888774.