Sexing Colorado Beetles

It seems that telling the sex of a Colorado Beetle is not straightforward. One has to lift the elytron wing casing to inspect the ends of the forewings. Some noble soul has gone to the trouble to work out that the female is better at gripping rough texture surfaces while the male is more adapted for gripping the smooth surface of the elytra for mating purposes.

I’ve noticed that while the CB is not a fast mover in terms of evasive action it has the ability to simply fall off a leaf and tumble onto the soil and leaf litter at the bottom of the plant. Invariably it falls feetside up hiding its gloriously obvious humbug topside; it plays dead and the russet underside is not easy to spot.

So now on approach, particularly when there are two CBs cavorting, I put one hand beneath the leaf to catch tumblers. Indeed, maybe it is the males who tumble most easily with their limited grip on the rough hairy surface of the potato leaf.