Pleasing Fungus Beetles from the family Erotylidae Latreille, 1802 are generally brightly coloured and hairless. Their antennae are clubbed, and tarsi (final leg segment) always 5-jointed. Although they are said to feed on fungus, I rarely see them in the vicinity of any fruiting fungi.

Etymology

The scientific family name Erotylidae was based on the type genus Erotylus when it was split from its former family Languriidae, which is now a subfamily of Erotylidae. Erotylus is derived from the greek word erōtylos, which means darling or sweetheart.

Not much is known about the origins of “pleasing” in the family name, but it is assumed so because of the large size and colourful patterns on many of the species.

Checklist

This page consists of a personal checklist of all Pleasing Fungus Beetles (Erotylidae) that I’ve encountered over the years. Most were identified with the help from the kind folks on Flickr and Facebook, especially Boris Büche and David Ball.

All photos are of live subjects shot in the field, with the dorsal view selected where available. Click on individual photos for larger views and views from other angles. As specimens were not collected, identifications were done purely based on photographs and may not be 100% accurate.

This page will be updated regularly, please let me know if you spot any mistakes.

View my complete Flickr photo set: Erotylidae – Pleasing Fungus Beetles.

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Class: Insecta Linnaeus, 1758

Order: Coleoptera Linnaeus, 1758

• beetles