Myrmex Floridanus

This handsome little black weevil (about 5mm long), with white setae and a white stripe along the outer edge of the elytra is Myrmex floridanus, without a common name.

As you may guess from the lack of a common name, this poor little dude has Wikipedia Stub Syndrome. Weevils in general are vegetarians, sometimes to the point of being pestiferous (but never personally harmful to humans or pets), and come in a huge (6,800 genera and 83,000 species) variety. The elongated snout (hence the common family name, “snout-beetles”) with its geniculate antennae are the defining trait of the family.

M. floridanus is in the family Otidocephalini, the “ant-like weevils”, although I can’t really see much that is ant-like about it (or its cousins). Its Latin name is irritatingly similar to that of an actual ant, Xenomyrmex floridanus, which makes it difficult to search for online, but that’s about as close as I can see that it gets.

I was this close to getting to write the word “Oopterinus“. Dangit.

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