''Bledius spectabilis'', commonly known as the magnificent salt beetle, is a species of small

rove beetle The rove beetles are a family (Staphylinidae) of beetles, primarily distinguished by their short elytra (wing covers) that typically leave more than half of their abdominal segments exposed. With roughly 63,000 species in thousands of genera, the ...

Description

This beetle is 5 to 7 millimetres long and has brightly coloured legs. The wing covers are brownish and as wide as they are long.

Distribution

''B. spectabilis'' inhabits the sea shores of the

Caspian Caspian can refer to: *The Caspian Sea *The Caspian Depression, surrounding the northern part of the Caspian Sea *The Caspians, the ancient people living near the Caspian Sea *Caspian languages, collection of languages and dialects of Caspian peopl ...

and

Black Sea The Black Sea is a marginal mediterranean sea of the Atlantic Ocean lying between Europe and Asia, east of the Balkans, south of the East European Plain, west of the Caucasus, and north of Anatolia. It is bounded by Bulgaria, Georgia, Roma ...

s, the coasts of the

Mediterranean The Mediterranean Sea is a sea connected to the Atlantic Ocean, surrounded by the Mediterranean Basin and almost completely enclosed by land: on the north by Western and Southern Europe and Anatolia, on the south by North Africa, and on the e ...

from

Asia Minor Anatolia, tr, Anadolu Yarımadası), and the Anatolian plateau, also known as Asia Minor, is a large peninsula in Western Asia and the westernmost protrusion of the Asian continent. It constitutes the major part of modern-day Turkey. The re ...

to Spain and Morocco, and the

Atlantic The Atlantic Ocean is the second-largest of the world's five oceans, with an area of about . It covers approximately 20% of Earth's surface and about 29% of its water surface area. It is known to separate the " Old World" of Africa, Europe an ...

coast as far north as the

Irish Sea The Irish Sea or , gv, Y Keayn Yernagh, sco, Erse Sie, gd, Muir Èireann , Ulster-Scots: ''Airish Sea'', cy, Môr Iwerddon . is an extensive body of water that separates the islands of Ireland and Great Britain. It is linked to the Ce ...

and the

North Sea The North Sea lies between Great Britain, Norway, Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands and Belgium. An epeiric sea on the European continental shelf, it connects to the Atlantic Ocean through the English Channel in the south and the Norwegian S ...

Behaviour

''Bledius spectabilis'', shows very unusual behaviour for an insect in that it actively protects its

larva A larva (; plural larvae ) is a distinct juvenile form many animals undergo before metamorphosis into adults. Animals with indirect development such as insects, amphibians, or cnidarians typically have a larval phase of their life cycle. The ...

e from the

parasitic wasp Parasitoid wasps are a large group of hymenopteran superfamilies, with all but the wood wasps (Orussoidea) being in the wasp-waisted Apocrita. As parasitoids, they lay their eggs on or in the bodies of other arthropods, sooner or later causi ...

Barycnemis blediator ''Barycnemis blediator'' is a small parasitic wasp. It lays its eggs in the larvae of the salt marsh rove beetle, ''Bledius spectabilis ''Bledius spectabilis'', commonly known as the magnificent salt beetle, is a species of small rove beetl ...

'' and from the predatory ''

Dicheirotrichus gustavi '' Dicheirotrichus gustavi '' is a ground beetle which emerges from cracks or holes to feed on tidal salt marshes after dusk. Despite living in a coastal environment, it has no cycle of behaviour linked to the tides, simply scurrying for dry lan ...

''.

References

External links

Images representing ''Bledius spectabilis''
at

Barcode of Life Data System The Barcode of Life Data System (commonly known as BOLD or BOLDSystems) is a web platform specifically devoted to DNA barcoding. It is a cloud-based data storage and analysis platform developed at the Centre for Biodiversity Genomics in Canada. It ...

{{Taxonbar, from=Q2114623 Staphylinidae Beetles of Europe Beetles described in 1857