Pictured here are several Purple Coneflowers that are feeding at least two species of skipper butterfly (Hesperia spp.) and one flower scarab beetle. These flowers have recently opened and are producing lots of nectar while the nearby countryside has few active nectar sources.
In this image you can see by the white spots on the undersides of the hindwings that there are two different kinds of skipper butterflies present. Notice that they are oblivious to the beetle and vice versa.
You can also see the proboscis of each butterfly which allow them to harvest nectar from deep within the flowers. The beetle doesn’t have these specialized mouthparts and cannot get to the skipper’s nectar. This allows both species to use the Coneflower as a food source by consuming different parts of it.
Both species of skippers hold their wings upright and tightly together which makes it difficult or impossible to see the characters needed to determine which species is which. I can only say with confidence these butterflies belong to the genus Hesperia in the Skipper family: Hesperiidae. If you look closely at this image, you can count 3 butterflies and one beetle.
The scarab beetle belongs to the Scarabaeidae family and its flower beetle subfamily Cetoniidae. I have scoured the internet unsuccesfully to find this creature’s species name. Images of Cyclocephala spp. are similar to this specimen but I found nothing that matched the markings of this creature. Such is the problem with using just photographs to identify some critter you have never seen before. Insects, in particular, usually require the specimen in hand and a good wide-field microscope to use the descriptive keys developed by entomologists to pin down just what species you have. Sometimes, you find some critter that hasn’t been described yet. Beetles are a broad and diverse group and not all of them are known to science. Thus, I cannot offer more than my best guess of the species names of the insects pictured here.
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