Metallic Borers

This past week we were on a hunt for tree eating insects.  With a colleague, I looked, primarily, for Dendroctonus beetles.  Tree killers.  But, at one location, we found a family of metallic wood borers.  In a dead white fir we collected both the larva (above) and the adult (below).  These beetles generally inhabit dead trees, and are not usually responsible for tree mortality.  An infamous cousin of this pair—the non-native emerald ash borer—is, however, on the march in the mid-west, and has already killed millions of ash trees.