Flower Beetle
Anatomy
These small beetles have a large abdomen, protected by the elytra, made from a hard chitin. The elytra is typically a pink colour with small purple spots on them. Their heads are small, with small beady eyes sitting on the fronts of their heads. These eyes can work completely independently from each other. Their legs are short, bright green, as well as the rest of the bodies except the elytra, to try and blend in with the cacti they rest on. They possess short yellow antenna on their heads, just above their eyes.
The flower beetle gets its name from the beautiful patterns on its chitin elytra, which greatly resembles the flowers on a cactus. They are also similar in size to the flowers. The beetles sit almost motionless on top of the cactus, disguising themselves as the flowers by spreading their four chitin wing shields, while they slowly consume the cactus from the top and enter inside.
Reproduction & Growth
Flower beetles reproduce in the global mating season on Talerin. They lay eggs inside their home cactus, where they also consume to stay alive. They plant the eggs inside the cactus, leaving them to hatch on their own while the parents continue to eat. They can lay eggs in their hundreds, but most never end up hatching.
As a larva, the baby beetles will spend their whole times in existence eating. They begin to pupate at 5 weeks old, where they won't move until they have completed the transformation from flower larva to flower beetle.
Diet
Flower beetles are herbivorous, feeding on the plentiful cacti around the planet. They use their proboscis and a type of enzyme to break it down, making it able to digest. They also have strong mouth pieces to dig down into the cactus and plant their eggs.
In captivity, the beetles can be fed other plants that aren't cacti. They cannot eat berries, fruits or vegetables, as the minerals inside will kill them, so thick stemmed plants and fungi are suitable for this species.
Habitat
Flower beetles are a worldwide species, comfortable in an array of environments. They thrive best in places with cacti, where they can disguise best and their larva also have a good chance at survival. Temperature generally has no effect on the survival of the flower beetle, excluding freezing temperatures.
Since their diet is expansive, those that do not inhabit desert environments have a diet of fungi and thick-stemmed plants. Because of this, divergent flower beetles have developed fungi-like elytra. What is even more useful is that both their elytra and fungi are made of chitin, even more helpful against predators.
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