none known
Family: Scarabaeidae Subfamily: Scarabaeinae Genus: Copris Species: Copris remotus Leconte, 1866
none available
Total body length 10.0–16.0 mm (0.39–0.63 in). Body shape oval; may be caked in dung. Color shiny black. Clypeal apex notched. Frons of major male with long, thin, well-developed horn; horn reduced in minor males; horn truncate to lacking in females. Pronotum with four horn-like protuberances in males; protuberances much reduced in females. Elytra with 9 striae; 8th stria complete, reaching rear margin of elytra.
Undescribed. For Copris spp. (Ritcher, 1966): Grub C-shaped, hump-backed, cylindrical, whitish. Maxilla with galea and lacinia distinctly separated. Epipharynx with tormae united mesally, anterior phoba present. Antenna 4-segmented; distal segment much reduced in size. Legs with small, blunt claws each bearing a terminal seta. Prothoracic shield with an anteriorly projecting, angular process on each side. Venter of last abdominal segment with paired, median, caudal lobes or a cleft median lobe.
Southwestern U.S., northern Mexico. In the U.S., this species is known from Texas and Oklahoma. In Mexico, the species is recorded from Coahuila, Nuevo León, and Tamaulipas (Kohlmann et al., 2003).
None. This species feeds on dung as both an adult and larva. There are no records of Copris remotus feeding on live plant tissues.
(Woodruff, 1973): Although the life history of this species is poorly known, related Copris species are dung tunnelers, with a male and female creating a burrow under a dung source. The burrow is provisioned with dung, which is formed into pear-shaped brood balls. An egg is deposited within each brood ball. Brood balls are attended by the female during development of the larva (Ratcliffe and Paulsen, 2008).
None. This species recycles dung and is beneficial for ranching and farming in Hawaii. Primarily being a dung feeder, this species has never been recorded damaging crop or ornamental plants. Additionally, this species is not a threat to native dung beetles because none occur in Hawaii or Guam.
Recorded, not established. In Hawaii, this species was imported in 1921 to combat the horn fly (Haematobia irritans), a biting pest of livestock (Fullaway, 1921). Specimens were released on all major islands except Kauai (Hawaii Division of Forestry, 1923). Despite these efforts the species failed to establish in Hawaii (Nishida, 2002).
Not established or recorded. There are no records of this species from Guam.
In Hawaii, this species was intentionally imported.
This scarab is extremely similar to the closely related Copris incertus. These species are separated by examination of the elytra (Copris remotus with the 8th stria complete, reaching the posterior elytral margin versus C. incertus with 8th stria incomplete, not reaching the posterior elytral margin).
Copris remotus dicyrtus Matthews and Halffter
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