Hello land-lovers, food-growers, and voracious vegetable consumers–
Does anyone know what kind of beetle this is? I’ve been seeing these a lot this year but don’t know if they’re friends or foes….
Looks sort of like a cucumber beetle but has a red thorax….too small to be a potato beetle, and not quite the right shape, size, or color….
HELP!!!
pretty sure it’s a bad guy–still looks like a striped cuke beetle to me. follow the link for pic: http://ipm.ncsu.edu/current_ipm/97PestNews/97News11/fruitveg.html.
I saw a bunch of these last summer in my garden, and I never could figure out what they were – it drove me crazy. Now I am on a mission to find out again. I don’t think that it is a striped cucumber beetle because it has four stripes down its back that connect, whereas the cucumber beetle seems to just have three that never touch each other. I bet that is is related to the cucumber beetle though. I’ll let you know if I figure something out.
My co-worker is helping me search. Maybe it is this? http://bugguide.net/node/view/532855/bgpage
If so, it is the same genus as the striped cucumber beetle. I think it might be called a western striped cucumber beetle. I don’t think that they are supposed to be this far east, but who knows…
As my search continues…. The UK extension entomologist, Lee Townsend, says that it is a pale striped flea beetle. He says “it chews small round pits in undersides of plant leaves. Feeds on a range of plants – legumes, sunflowers, several vegetables and some weeds. Can be damaging to seedlings but usually not to smaller plants.” -Lee.