Zopherus jourdani
species of insect
Zopherus jourdani is a species of ironclad beetle found in Central America. It is found in Honduras, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Mexico, and Nicaragua, and has been collected every month of the year from altitudes ranging from 2,500 to 9,800 feet (760 to 2,990 m). The species plays dead when disturbed, which earned it the name durene niño in Costa Rica. It lives under the bark of trees, including balsa and pine.
Ability to go without food
The ability of Z. jourdani to survive for an extended time without food is documented in several papers and journals; it is known as caméleon in Guatemala because of this ability. In the 1877–1878 Annales de la Sociéte Entomologique de Belgique, such a demonstration is recorded on the July 6 meeting: "Mr. J. Rodriguèz brought six examples from Guatemala, kept without food in a box during the since the month of April. Three arrived in Europe still alive." (French: M. J. Rodriguez vient d'en apporter de Guatemala six examplaires, demeurés sans nourriture dans un boîte depuis le mois d'Avril. Trois sont arrivés encore vivants en Europe.)
Appearance
Specimens of Z. jourdani have variable colouration; they are mottled black and white, but the amount of each colour present varies. Light forms from Costa Rica were described by George C. Champion in 1874 as Z. costaricensis, which was synonymized nearly a century later in 1972.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Zopherus jourdani” is species of insect. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Zopherus, jourdani and species, not as a finished interpretation.
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This entry incorporates text from “Zopherus jourdani” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.