Webinar: Beetles (Great Southeast Pollinator Course, Week 7 of 7)
Webinar Date: July 28, 2026
Speaker: Dr. Joe McHugh, Herbert H. and Jean A. Ross Memorial Distinguished Professor of Insect Systematics and Evolutionary Biology, Department of Entomology, University of Georgia; Curator of Arthropods, Georgia Museum of Natural History
Host: Becky Griffin (National Coordinator, Great Southeast Pollinator Census)
Series: Great Southeast Pollinator Course
Source: Corrected SRT (Stage 1), GTBOP_Transcript_2026-07-28_Beetles.srt (989 blocks); Archive Package (Stage 2) for structural reference
Audience note: This is a self-paced comprehension check for home gardeners, school and community garden leaders, and Great Southeast Pollinator Census counters. No applicator CEU attaches to this course. Every stem, key, and wrong option comes from what Dr. McHugh said in this session.
Question set: 15 multiple-choice questions; 6 Recall, 6 Application, 3 Analysis, interleaved rather than blocked by difficulty. Coverage runs across McHugh’s five blocks of content: anatomy (7:31–16:03), history (16:03–19:23), diversity (19:23–30:00), biology and cantharophily (30:00–37:30), and the eight-group identification tour (37:30–46:26), plus the live Q&A (48:44–51:18). Question 14 is the one item that reaches into the census segment, and it is there because it is what a counter does with a beetle once they have found one.
Pass this warning to students along with the quiz. At 7:52 McHugh told the audience that with beetles there is an exception to every rule, so nearly everything he was about to say is a partial truth. These questions ask what he said, not what holds for every beetle on earth.
Questions
Question 1
Timestamp Reference: 9:33 – 10:07
Difficulty: Recall
Coleoptera translates to “sheath wing.” Which structure is the name pointing at?
a) The membranous hind wings, folded and coiled up out of sight under the back
b) The opposed mandibles, working like chisels to pinch and chop up food
c) The front pair of wings, hardened into protective shells over the abdomen
d) The body plates, hard and crunchy and fitted tightly against one another
Correct Answer: c
Explanation: McHugh said the name refers to the anterior pair of wings, which power flight in most insects, becoming hard shells that protect the abdomen. Those are the elytra: the seam down the middle of the back and the two hard plates people picture when they picture a beetle.
Source in transcript: Blocks 134–140 (~9:33–10:07). The other three structures are all his, from the same anatomy section: the folded and coiled hind wings under the elytra (blocks 143–145, ~10:18), mandibles acting like chisels (block 181, ~13:12), and the tightly abutting body plates (blocks 158–164, ~11:33).
Question 2
Timestamp Reference: 10:54 – 11:26
Difficulty: Analysis
Beetles traded their main flight wings for armor and became clumsy fliers as a result. Why did McHugh call that trade an important adaptation rather than a mistake?
a) The hardened surface picked up and carried more pollen than body hairs could
b) It made beetles faster and more precise in the air than flies and bees are
c) The armor let beetles bore wood, burrow, and swim, and still fly away after
d) The hardened front wings kept powering flight, so nothing was really lost
Correct Answer: c
Explanation: McHugh’s phrase was “the best of both worlds.” Hardening the top pair of wings into shells that protect the abdomen and the hind wings opened up habitats and resources closed to other flying insects, and the beetle could still pop the elytra open and fly off.
Source in transcript: Blocks 149–156 (~10:54–11:26). Option b is contradicted a minute later: flies, Hymenoptera, and Lepidoptera hover and fly precisely, and beetles do not (blocks 169–176, ~12:26). Option d is contradicted at block 139 (~10:01), where the front wings are no longer capable of powering flight. Option a misplaces a real mechanism; pollen carrying comes from the vestiture of setae on fuzzy beetles (blocks 394–396, ~28:16).
Question 3
Timestamp Reference: 13:39 – 14:19
Difficulty: Recall
A weevil’s long snout looks like it should work as a straw. What did McHugh say is actually at the end of it?
a) A tongue that laps nectar up out of the flower, the way a bee’s does
b) A labellum for lapping up liquid food, the way a fly’s does
c) A coiled proboscis that pushes down deep into a flower, the way a moth’s does
d) Small biting and chewing mandibles, the same kind other beetles have
Correct Answer: d
Explanation: The rostrum is just part of the weevil’s head capsule, elongated, and at the very tip sit little mandibles and little biting, chewing mouthparts. McHugh raised weevils to head off the obvious objection: they are not an exception to the rule that beetles cannot drink.
Source in transcript: Blocks 186–193 (~13:39–14:19). The three wrong options belong to the groups he contrasted beetles against in the next breath: the bee’s tongue (blocks 195–196, ~14:22), the fly’s labellum (block 199, ~14:38), and the butterfly and moth proboscis (blocks 197–198, ~14:29).
Question 4
Timestamp Reference: 33:59 – 37:20
Difficulty: Application
You are picking one plant in your garden to sit and watch for beetles during the census. Going by the flower syndrome McHugh described, which is the best bet?
a) A small bright flower with no scent and nothing flat to land on
b) A flower with strong nectar guides pointing down toward a deep nectar reward
c) A flower that opens only after dark and gives off a faint, thin fragrance
d) A big white bowl-shaped flower with thick petals and a strong spicy smell
Correct Answer: d
Explanation: McHugh said beetle-pollinated flowers tend to carry a strong fruity, spicy, fermenting, or musky fragrance, tend to open during the day, and tend to run white, yellow, pale green, or burgundy. They skip nectar guides and give the beetle a big landing pad with thick petals to chew on. Beetles are bad fliers and want to flop onto something.
Source in transcript: Blocks 466–501 (~33:59–37:20). Each wrong option inverts a feature he named: specialist flowers do not have nectar guides, because beetles are not after nectar (blocks 483–487, ~35:37); the flowers are diurnal partly because the heat of the day spreads the scent (blocks 474–478, ~34:54); and beetles need a big landing pad and lean on smell over sight (blocks 472 and 499, ~34:45 and ~37:02).
Question 5
Timestamp Reference: 10:42 – 10:54
Difficulty: Recall
A beetle that has traded its front wings for armor flies on the hind wings alone. What did McHugh call that condition?
a) Posteromotorism
b) Cantharophily
c) Stridulation
d) Bioluminescence
Correct Answer: a
Explanation: “When you give up two of your wings, you’re flying only with your hind wings, and that’s called posteromotorism.” The other three terms are all his, from later in the session, and none of them has anything to do with flight.
Source in transcript: Block 147 (~10:42). Wrong options: cantharophily, pollination by beetles (block 448, ~32:38); stridulation, how bess beetles communicate with their larvae (block 381, ~27:33); bioluminescence, which five beetle families can produce (blocks 383–388, ~27:40).
Question 6
Timestamp Reference: 15:03 – 15:53
Difficulty: Analysis
Beetle-pollinated flowers put their effort into strong scent and skip nectar guides. Connect that to beetle anatomy as McHugh explained it.
a) Their antennae read humidity and touch, and a strong scent is a humidity signal
b) They find flowers by sound vibration, and fragrance is what carries the vibration
c) They are hunting nectar, and a strong scent is what marks where the nectar sits
d) Their antennae read chemical and thermal cues, and beetles rely less on vision
Correct Answer: d
Explanation: McHugh singled out two of the sensoria types as the ones that matter for pollination, chemical and temperature, because those are what flowers use to lure pollinators in. He came back to it in the syndrome section: the fragrances are meant to lure beetles in, and color matters less because beetles are working from other cues.
Source in transcript: Blocks 205–213 (~15:03–15:53), returned to at blocks 469–472 and 482 (~34:23–35:29). Options a and b name real sensoria types from the same list, humidity, touch, and sound vibration (blocks 209–210), in roles McHugh did not give them. Option c is contradicted: beetles are flying in for pollen and petals, not nectar, which is exactly why specialist flowers skip nectar guides (blocks 483–487, ~35:37).
Question 7
Timestamp Reference: 20:35 – 21:20
Difficulty: Recall
McHugh set the weevil family against two mammal groups to make a point about scale. Which set of figures did he give?
a) About 35 species in the dog family, 270 in the order Carnivora, and 65,000 weevils
b) About 35 species in the dog family, 270 in the order Carnivora, and 400,000 weevils
c) About 270 in the dog family, 65,000 in the order Carnivora, and 320,000 weevils
d) About 65,000 in the dog family, 320,000 in Carnivora, and 400,000 weevils
Correct Answer: a
Explanation: The dog family Canidae holds about 35 species and the whole order Carnivora 270, against roughly 65,000 species in the weevil family Curculionidae. He added that weevils are probably only the second-biggest beetle family; Staphylinidae is the biggest.
Source in transcript: Blocks 281–292 (~20:35–21:20), with Staphylinidae at block 277 (~20:15). The other figures in the wrong options are real numbers from the same stretch used for the wrong group: about 400,000 described beetle species and about 320,000 species in the kingdom Plantae (blocks 308–310, ~22:27–22:47).
Question 8
Timestamp Reference: 30:54 – 31:45
Difficulty: Application
You find a beetle on a flower during a count and want to look for its larvae nearby. Based on what McHugh said about beetle pollinators, where should you look?
a) On that same flower, feeding on pollen and petals alongside the adult
b) In wood, in leaf litter, or in the soil, with no connection to the flower
c) Nowhere; beetle pollinators go straight from egg to adult with no larva
d) In an underground cell provisioned with a dung ball, as dung beetles do
Correct Answer: b
Explanation: McHugh called this a very strange split. In beetle species known to be pollinators, the larvae typically have nothing to do with the flowers: they are borers in wood, detritivores in leaf litter, or soil inhabiting, disconnected from what the adult is doing. Pollination in beetles is always limited to the adult stage.
Source in transcript: Blocks 430–437 (~30:54–31:45), with the larva as the longest-lived and hungriest stage at blocks 426–429 (~30:38). Option c is ruled out earlier in the same section: beetles are holometabolous, laying eggs that hatch into larvae that pupate (blocks 414–421, ~30:08). Option d is real content from the wrong place, the dung beetle nest (blocks 370–373, ~26:56).
Question 9
Timestamp Reference: 32:54 – 33:57
Difficulty: Recall
What did McHugh say a beetle actually does while it is on a flower?
a) It laps nectar up with a tongue and carries pollen away on the hairs covering its body
b) It chews the petals and the sexual parts, plows around, mates on the flower, and defecates on it
c) It wanders around on the flower head, then pops off and drops to the ground if disturbed
d) It exudes droplets of cantharidin from the joints of its body, which blisters skin on contact
Correct Answer: b
Explanation: This is why he called beetles “mess and soil” pollinators and said they are not very elegant diners if you want to put it nicely. He summed the whole thing up as part dust mop cruising around picking up pollen, part tractor plowing through and doing damage.
Source in transcript: Blocks 452–464 (~32:54–33:57). The wrong options are all real beetle content from this session in the wrong place: the bee’s tongue and the setae that carry pollen (blocks 195–196 and 394–396), the tumbling flower beetles dropping off when disturbed (blocks 614–615, ~46:05), and blister beetles exuding cantharidin (block 577, ~43:16).
Question 10
Timestamp Reference: 41:37 – 42:25
Difficulty: Application
McHugh said soldier beetles look a lot like fireflies. Which character did he give for telling the two apart?
a) Whether the head can be seen from above, or the pronotum is covering it
b) Whether the elytra are soft and leathery, or hard and crunchy instead
c) Whether the antennae are long and thread-like, or short and clubbed instead
d) Whether the body is yellow, brown, or reddish with black markings on it
Correct Answer: a
Explanation: McHugh said cantharids look like a firefly, but you can see the head from above, they have no light organ, and they cannot bioluminesce. In fireflies the pronotum covers the whole head, so you cannot see it from above.
Source in transcript: Blocks 559–562 (~41:54–42:17), with fireflies producing light at block 386 (~27:51). Options b, c, and d are all real characters McHugh gave for the soldier beetles themselves (blocks 555–563, ~41:40–42:24), but he did not offer any of them as the way to separate the two groups. The two firefly characters he gave are the pronotum over the head and the light organ.
Question 11
Timestamp Reference: 44:45 – 45:05
Difficulty: Recall
Which antenna did McHugh give as the giveaway character for the nitidulids?
a) A fan-like club at the tip that closes up tight or opens out like a fan
b) Thread-like, at least half the body length, sometimes longer than the beetle
c) An abrupt club at the tip that is round and flat, like a lollipop on a stick
d) No longer than half the body length, on a beetle that looks snoutless
Correct Answer: c
Explanation: McHugh said to think “lollipop on a stick” antennae for the nitidulids and called it a great character for recognizing them. The other three descriptions are his, from three other families in the same tour.
Source in transcript: Blocks 595–599 (~44:45–45:05). Wrong options: the scarab’s fan-like club (blocks 521–522, ~39:00), the longhorn beetle’s thread-like antennae (blocks 536–540, ~40:08), and the leaf beetle’s shorter antennae on a snoutless, weevil-like body (blocks 545–546, ~40:53).
Question 12
Timestamp Reference: 42:27 – 43:26
Difficulty: Application
A counter at your census event reaches for a boldly patterned beetle with floppy elytra and a neck-like narrowing behind the head. What do you tell them, and why?
a) Go ahead; that is a scarab, and the abdomen showing past the elytra is the giveaway
b) Leave it; that is a blister beetle, and cantharidin from its joints blisters skin
c) Leave it; those are the enlarged mandibles a male stag beetle fights with
d) Go ahead; if it objects it will just pop off the flower and drop to the ground
Correct Answer: b
Explanation: McHugh described the neck-like narrowing behind the head, the soft floppy or sometimes very short elytra, and the usually striking pattern, then said the coloration is aposematic and is warning you not to touch. Blister beetles exude droplets of cantharidin from the joints of the body, and it causes blistering of your skin.
Source in transcript: Blocks 565–578 (~42:27–43:26). Wrong options come from other beetles in the session: the scarab abdomen showing past the elytra (blocks 525–527, ~39:22), the enlarged mandibles male stag beetles fight with (blocks 182 and 363–365, ~13:23 and ~26:23), and the tumbling flower beetles dropping to the ground (blocks 614–615, ~46:05).
Question 13
Timestamp Reference: 45:20 – 45:38
Difficulty: Application
A grower with a pawpaw planting asks which beetles matter to their fruit set. What did McHugh say?
a) Scarabs, the June beetles and chafers, are one of the key pollinators
b) Nitidulids, the sap and picnic beetles, are one of the key pollinators
c) Soldier beetles, the cantharids, are one of the key pollinators
d) Tumbling flower beetles, the mordellids, are one of the key pollinators
Correct Answer: b
Explanation: McHugh said nitidulid beetles are the known pollinators of the pawpaw tree and called them one of the key pollinators for that fruit, which he also noted is the largest edible fruit in North America. Keep his hedge: one of the key pollinators, not the only one.
Source in transcript: Blocks 603–606 (~45:20–45:38). The three wrong options are families he covered in the same identification tour and connected to no particular plant: Scarabaeidae (block 517, ~38:44), Cantharidae (blocks 553–554, ~41:37), and the mordellids (block 607, ~45:39).
Question 14
Timestamp Reference: 38:11 – 38:37, and 52:09 – 52:42
Difficulty: Application
On census day you record a soldier beetle, a lady beetle, and a praying mantid. Where do those go on the count sheet?
a) The beetles get their own category and only the mantid goes in “other insects”
b) Only the lady beetle counts, because the census does not record predators
c) None of them counts; the census records bees, wasps, flies, and butterflies
d) All three go in the same place, the “other insects” category
Correct Answer: d
Explanation: McHugh pointed out with some good humor that carpenter bees, bumblebees, honeybees, and small bees each get their own category while beetles do not get one even at the order level, so they land in “other insects.” Griffin then showed her own examples of what belongs in that category, including a flower beetle on jewelweed, dragonflies, mantids, an ambush bug on mountain mint, and lady beetles.
Source in transcript: Blocks 511–514 (~38:11–38:37) for the category, blocks 698–707 (~52:09–52:42) for Griffin’s examples. Option c is contradicted directly: Griffin said the August count will turn up insects that do not fall into the eight named categories. Option b is contradicted by that same list, which puts mantids and dragonflies in the category alongside the lady beetle.
Question 15
Timestamp Reference: 50:19 – 51:12
Difficulty: Analysis
An attendee reasoned that if beetles mimic vespid wasps, and beetles go back 300 million years, then vespids must be about that old too. How did McHugh answer, and on what grounds?
a) Yes; the mimicry complexes go back as far as the beetle lineage itself does
b) Yes; the ancient beetles that lived on cycads were already mimicking vespids
c) No; the mimicking beetles came later, as did many beetle pollinator groups
d) No; those beetles mimic moths, not wasps, so vespid age does not come into it
Correct Answer: c
Explanation: McHugh separated two things the question had joined. The ancient lines on his evolutionary tree were associated with cycads hundreds of millions of years ago, but many beetles became pollinators much more recently, and it is those later groups that got into mimicry complexes to protect themselves out in the open on a flower.
Source in transcript: Blocks 674–682 (~50:19–51:12), building on the wasp-mimicking beetles at blocks 349–352 (~25:14). Option d uses real content from the wrong place: McHugh did describe moth-like beetles in a Müllerian mimicry complex, but that was a separate example (blocks 353–357, ~25:42).
Answer Key
| Q | Answer | Difficulty | Topic | Segment |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | c | Recall | Coleoptera means sheath wing | Anatomy |
| 2 | c | Analysis | Why the elytra trade paid off | Anatomy |
| 3 | d | Recall | What sits at the tip of a weevil’s rostrum | Anatomy |
| 4 | d | Application | Picking a flower to watch | Cantharophily |
| 5 | a | Recall | Posteromotorism | Anatomy |
| 6 | d | Analysis | Sensoria and the scent-first syndrome | Anatomy and cantharophily |
| 7 | a | Recall | Weevils against dogs and Carnivora | Diversity |
| 8 | b | Application | Where beetle pollinator larvae live | Biology |
| 9 | b | Recall | What a beetle does on a flower | Cantharophily |
| 10 | a | Application | Soldier beetle against firefly | Identification tour |
| 11 | c | Recall | Lollipop antennae of the nitidulids | Identification tour |
| 12 | b | Application | Blister beetles and cantharidin | Identification tour |
| 13 | b | Application | Nitidulids and pawpaw | Identification tour |
| 14 | d | Application | The “other insects” category | Identification tour and census |
| 15 | c | Analysis | Timing of vespid mimicry | Live Q&A |
Verification
- All 15 stems, all 15 keys, and all 60 options trace to numbered blocks in the corrected SRT. Block ranges appear under every question.
- Distractors were built by taking real content from elsewhere in this session and putting it in the wrong role: another family’s antennae, another insect’s mouthparts, another beetle’s defense, a syndrome feature McHugh explicitly ruled out. No option introduces a species, plant, body part, color, or figure that he did not name on air. Where a wrong option describes a real character of the beetle in the stem, the explanation says so and says why it is still wrong.
- Answer letters run 3 a, 4 b, 4 c, 4 d, and difficulty is interleaved rather than grouped, so neither position nor sequence signals the key. Option lengths were levelled within each item; the key is the sole longest option in two of fifteen questions and tied for longest in two more, never by more than two characters.
- Speaker hedges are preserved throughout: nitidulids are one of the key pollinators of pawpaw, weevils are probably the second-biggest family, blister beetle coloration is usually striking, and the flower syndrome features are ones beetle-pollinated flowers tend to have.
- Three figures were kept out of the quiz on the Stage 1 log’s instruction. The Mammalia and Chordata species counts (blocks 296 and 302) are internally inconsistent in the source, and the chordate nerve cord claim at block 300 is a speaker slip. None appears in any stem, key, or distractor.
- No horn morphology item was written. The Stage 1 log records an engine disagreement at block 362 between “thorax” and “prothorax” and asks for a listen before that content is assessed.
- The click beetle family is not named anywhere in this file. Block 579 carries the session’s one open
[VERIFY]flag and the machine path is exhausted after three engines. No quiz item was written on that group at all; the matching set covers it by the pronotal hinge and the backward-projecting tooth, which is what Stage 2 and Stage 3 published. If the flag is ever resolved, this file needs no change. - Two live Q&A exchanges were excluded from assessment. The coontie question (blocks 661–670) went unanswered on air, with both Griffin and McHugh saying they did not know, and the written Q&A McHugh was sent to at 51:18 is not in this recording. Neither is gradeable.
- Stage 2’s Q&A pairs were treated as covered ground rather than a question bank. Question 9 is the closest neighbor to a Stage 2 pair and was rewritten to ask what a beetle does on a flower rather than to ask for the definition of a term Stage 2 already defines. Questions 4, 8, 12, 13, and 14 rebuild shared content as scenarios a census counter would actually face.
Moodle activities produced for UGA Center for Urban Agriculture / Great Southeast Pollinator Course · gsepc.org
Source: Corrected SRT (Stage 1), GTBOP_Transcript_2026-07-28_Beetles.srt (989 blocks); Archive Package (Stage 2)