One of the few things I like about the warm weather is that we see the emergence of some of my favourite animals – the little ones! Colourful bugs, beautiful butterflies, elegant moths, cute native flies, predatory dragonflies and even our many fascinating wasps – but everyone’s favourites are of course the BEETLES!

The iridescent Christmas Beetle family gets a lot of attention, and rightly so – these lovely beetles have seen a severe decline in the population over recent decades. There is even an annual Christmas Beetle count to try to assess how many we have left. Our local Christmas beetle species is a lovely beige colour shot through with greenish iridescence.

But the beetle pictured here isn’t a Christmas beetle at all! Christmas Beetles are in the Scarab family, and this gorgeous dude is actually a stag beetle (family Lucanidae)!  A Golden Stag Beetle, Lamprima aurata.

Readers may have seen stag beetles in nature documentaries, large brown beetles which have big battles using their large mandibles. Golden Stag Beetles also engage in these WrestleMania type battles, but with an interesting twist.

There are 95 stag beetle species in Australia, and this species is quite unusual in that they have a special slicing apparatus on their front legs. The male beetles use these to slice open plant stems, to let the sap flow, and attract females (who do not have these attachments) to feed on the sap! If there are lots of males and just a few females that is when the fights begin, with males using their short and sturdy mandible to chuck their opponent off the tree or bush they are feeding upon.

The adults eat mainly sap from a variety of plants, both native and non-native, and some nectar and pollen.

The young stag beetles are ‘curl grubs’ like the lawn cockchafers and Christmas Beetles – but instead of eating plant roots Golden Stag Beetles find their food in decaying logs. The young beetles spend two or three years chewing through rotting logs, eating the fungi within the log and playing a vital role in forest ecology, helping to break down these large logs and so cycle nutrients naturally through the forest ecosystem. Large logs are a vital part of our forests, and provide so much habitat for fauna – with Golden Stag Beetles being just about the most colourful!

Like all beetles the larvae then form a pupa for a while – and then they emerge! Perfectly formed, in a wondrous iridescent colour that ranges from emerald green to gold to blueish red –  and they are ready to mate and begin the cycle again. For some truly spectacular photos of this species during all life stages check out Australian Insects Golden Stag Beetle.

This male Golden Stag beetle ( also in photo 1) was observed at Bellbird Picnic Ground Yarra Bend Park a few years ago.

References:
Observations on the life history and habits of the stag beetle Lamprima aurata (Latreille)(Coleoptera: Lucanidae) in Tasmania. December 1996
Australian Entomologist 23(4):133-138

Two novel adult food plants for the green and gold stag beetle Lamprima aurata (Scarabaeoidea: Lucanidae) in Coastal Tasmania The Tasmanian Naturalist 139 (2017) 7 Simon Fearn Natural Sciences, Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery, PO Box 403, Launceston, Tasmania 7250

This article originally appeared in the Wombat Post in November 2024