A rarely seen Blister Beetle: Eupompha wenzeli

My friend Chasity Shelton found this exciting little Meloid Beetle Eupompha wenzeli and invited me to see it for myself. It may not be rare - we saw at least a dozen without trying too hard, but all observations over decades have come from the same area (creosote flats east of the Silverbell Mountains) and the beetles seem to be out only after good rains that cause the host plant (?) Pectis papposa to sprout and bloom. Anyway, a number of my entomologist friends were pretty excited and called it a 'Good Bug'

The little Asteraceae Pectis papposa covers the ground of of the creosote flats (here our backyard) when the monsoon rains are generous, but does not pop up at all during draught years as we had them for nearly a decade now. With the distribution of the plant, the beetles may occur in our direct neighborhood, but they are so tiny and the yellow fields are pretty wide-spread, so I may have overlooked the beetles.

Many Blister Beetle species follow the patterns of their 'host' plants. I hesitate a little to use that term. Blister Beeles feed on certain plants as adults and they find each other in often grgarious assemblies to mate. Their larvae however are predatory. Different species feed on prey from grasshopper eggs to hymenoptera eggs/larvae/provisions in the nests of solitary bees. Many Blister Beetle Spp only appear very sporadically when the conditions are optimal, and I have no idea where and in which form they spend the years inbetween

Chasity took a photo of my hair going grey over the effort of photographing tiny, lifely beetles with a camera whose backscreen was completely useless in the sunshine.