Painted Beetle
The Painted Beetle is a common beetle found most often within Yuriba Forest.
Description
A small beetle, half an inch long. Black heads, legs and antennae, their colorful wing covers split in two distinct sections. The upper half nearest their head is an iridescent green, the lower half a mix of colors that looks like small drops of paint have been dripped on them and mingled, but each beetle stays within one step on the color spectrum. A beetle with primarily yellow coloring with stay within green, yellow and orange, while a blue beetle will go from green, blue and purple. The color of the parents has nothing to do with the color of the young, a red spectrum beetle can mate with a blue spectrum beetle and the resulting young will be any color, though with a slight tendency toward the same color as their parents.
Habitat, Behavior and Diet
The Painted Beetle resides mostly within the more heavily forested areas, tending toward the moisture of underbrush and nearby sources of water such as streams, rivers and ponds or lakes. Burrowing into the underbrush, the beetle feeds on plant litter and new growth, though it tends to only eat the tips of newly grown leaves before it moves on, leaving a distinctive mark on young trees. Poisonous as an adult, the beetle's larva are not, developing the poisonous property as it grows into it's adult, beetle form.
Laying it's eggs in the waning hours of the fall, the adult beetle moves from it's usual habitat within the forest to the edges of the forest where Birdsfoil grows, engaging in a colorful display of flight and the flexing of wing covers to attract a mate. Observers have noted that the beetle to most often be the animal to put on a display are those within the 'warm' color spectrum; the beetles that are primarily red, orange, yellow and the lightest of greens. Those which observe and choose a mate are the beetles on the 'cool' color spectrum; darker greens, blues and purples. The brighter the colors and iridescence, the greater chance a beetle has to mate. Once the beetles have mated, both will lay eggs at the root of the Birdsfoil deep into the soil, where they will stay through the winter before hatching into larvae in the spring. The larvae eat extensively and almost exclusively on the Birdsfoil upon hatching, before moving into the forests as they grow older.
Additional Information
The local pixie population favor the insect's wing covers for decoration and crafting, gathering the discarded shells to use in their craftwork. Often the shells are carefully cut apart where the colors seem splashed on the wing cover and are then used in mosaic like applications, or even in clothing.