"I like trees because they seem more resigned to the way they have to live than other things do," Willa Cather, circa 1895. I could not have said it any better. There are certain bugs that would agree with Ms. Cather on many levels. This came to us in a very different way. It fell from the high beam ceiling here at the Living Materials Center and landed on office manager extraordinare, Tammy Welch's desk. I looked, I pondered, and I knew I had seen him before, but it was Dr. Mike Merchant, Texas A&M Horticultural Extension Service entomologist to the rescue.

A digital photo, and an email was all it took. This is the Ivory marked beetle, Eburia quadrigeminata. He is elongate, one inch long, pale yellow and has long antennae. It has two pairs of ivory white spots on each wing cover. This beetle develops as a grub in the inner wood of non-evergreen trees. The grubs can end up in furniture and hardwood house parts like windowsills, and beams in nature centers. When this happens, the normal two-year life cycle is slowed down. Adult beetles can emerge from finished wood products years after the infested tree was harvested for lumber. Let's see, we've been in this building since 1989.

According to the University of Florida's site on insect records, this species holds the record for longest time spent in the larval stage:
"The wood boring beetle when feeding in dry wood, may have its development so greatly retarded that adults emerge from furniture and flooring many years after manufacture or installation. Delayed emergence of this beetle was discovered from a birch bookcase 40 years old..."