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
Moderator: Becky Griffin, National Coordinator, Great Southeast Pollinator Census (co-host Rich Braman, UGA Center for Urban Agriculture)
Duration: 1:13:54
Series: Great Southeast Pollinator Course
Credit at a Glance
| Educator PLU | 1 PLU for educators who attended the live session. |
| Applicator CEU | None. This session carries no Georgia pesticide applicator CEU categories. |
| Archive viewing | The recording is for education and census preparation. PLU credit was tied to live attendance and does not transfer to asynchronous viewing. |
This is a Great Southeast Pollinator Course session for home gardeners, school and community gardens, growers, county agents, and census volunteers, not a licensed-applicator program. No pesticide or control recommendations appear in it. Frame it accordingly when you share it.
Who This Is For
Use this one with anyone who has already learned the bees and is now stuck on everything else. Beetles are the group the census count sheet handles worst: carpenter bees, bumblebees, honeybees, and small bees each get a category and beetles do not get one even at the order level, so every beetle a volunteer sees goes under “other insects.” Griffin says as much on air, notes that the original count sheet had no beetle on it while the updated form does, and dedicates this year’s “I Counted” sticker to lady beetles in McHugh’s honor. That is a good way to open the session with a garden club or a county volunteer training.
The eight-group identification tour is the census-prep payload. Beyond that, the diversity section stands on its own for a general audience: one in four described animal species is a beetle, and McHugh makes that land without any prior entomology. This is also the final session of the seven-week course, so it works as the closer for anyone watching the series through.
What the Session Covers
Dr. Joe McHugh joined from a public library in Vergennes, Vermont, and opened by naming his own bias. He is a beetle systematist, not a pollination biologist, so the talk runs out from beetle biology toward pollination rather than starting there. His warning up front, that with beetles there is an exception to every rule, is worth repeating to any group you show this to.
Anatomy drives the rest. The elytra, the hardened front wings behind the name Coleoptera (“sheath wing”), are the trade: beetles gave up their primary flight wings for armor, which let them bore wood, burrow, and swim while still flying on the hind wings alone, a condition called posteromotorism. The cost is clumsy flight and a rigid body. Their jaws bite and chew rather than lapping or sucking, so a beetle cannot drink nectar at all, and their antennae read chemical and thermal cues rather than visual ones.
History and diversity follow. Beetles go back at least 300 million years against roughly 230 million for dinosaurs, and they were pollinating cycads and other gymnosperms more than 150 million years ago, before bees, butterflies, or flowering plants existed. Water lilies and magnolias still carry that connection. The weevil family alone holds about 65,000 species against 35 in the dog family and 270 in the entire order Carnivora; Coleoptera has about 400,000 described species against roughly 320,000 plants.
The pollination section starts at 32:35 with the term cantharophily and the label McHugh gives beetles, “mess and soil” pollinators, part dust mop and part tractor. They chew the petals and sexual parts, mate on the flower, and defecate on it. Flowers that specialize for them answer with strong fruity, spicy, fermenting, or musky fragrance, daytime opening, no nectar guides, and a wide landing pad. Pollination happens only in the adult stage; the larvae are usually borers, detritivores, or soil dwellers with no connection to flowers.
The last nine minutes of the presentation walk eight southeastern groups with the field characters that separate each one, and the session closes on the line that is the whole argument in one sentence: being a clumsy flier and a sloppy diner does not stop you from being an important pollinator. Griffin takes the final twenty-two minutes for census wrap-up.
Viewing Notes for Asynchronous Use
- Total runtime is 1:13:54, and it splits cleanly in two. McHugh’s half runs from his introduction at 1:18 to 51:18, with live questions at 48:47 and 50:19. From 51:18 to the end it is census wrap-up rather than beetle content: the August count, phone counting, the mascot art, state coordinators, and the dedication to Walter Reeves. Show either half on its own.
- For census identification, use 37:30 to 46:37. Nine minutes, eight groups, one or two field characters apiece. This is the strongest census-prep segment in the session and the piece to show if you only show one.
- For “why should I care about beetles,” use 16:03 to 24:18. The history and diversity run, ending on one in four animal species. It converts a room faster than the anatomy does.
- For a garden-club audience, use 32:35 to 37:30. Cantharophily and the flower syndrome: what a beetle-pollinated flower smells like, when it opens, and why it needs a wide landing pad. Pair it with 45:23 on pawpaw, the largest edible fruit in North America and the fruit connection in this session.
- For a school or youth audience, use 24:18 to 28:10. The beetleverse stretch, with elephants, giraffes, horns, wasp mimics, and the bess beetles that care for their young. No technical vocabulary required.
- Two live questions were answered on air at 48:47 and 50:19, on how beetles get water and on the age of vespids relative to their beetle mimics. A third, whether beetles pollinate coontie, went unanswered: Griffin and McHugh both said they did not know, and McHugh added that he is a beetle guy, not a plant guy. Treat that one as an open question rather than repeating an answer. McHugh was also sent to the written Q&A, and those typed answers are not in the recording.
- The full 62-chapter list is in the website archive version for this session.
Pull These for Discussion
- Beetles are not on the count sheet, and they are on the sticker. Every beetle a volunteer sees goes under “other insects” while four kinds of bee get their own boxes. The original form had no beetle on it; the updated one does, and this year’s “I Counted” sticker features lady beetles in McHugh’s honor. The fastest way to make this session feel relevant to a census volunteer.
- One in every four described animal species is a beetle. About 400,000 described beetles against roughly 320,000 plants, and 65,000 weevils against 35 species of dog. The number that reframes the whole group.
- Beetles were pollinating before flowers existed. Cycads and other gymnosperms, more than 150 million years ago, before bees and before butterflies. Water lilies and magnolias still show it.
- A beetle cannot drink nectar. Biting and chewing jaws, no tongue and no proboscis. It explains why beetle flowers skip nectar guides entirely, and it is the detail people find most surprising.
- “Mess and soil” pollinators. They chew the flower, mate on it, and defecate on it, and they pollinate it anyway. Part dust mop, part tractor. The most quotable line in the session.
- Do not pick up a blister beetle. Meloids exude cantharidin from the joints of the body and it blisters skin. The bright contrasting pattern is aposematic, a warning. The one safety item in the session.
- Picnic beetles pollinate the pawpaw. McHugh named nitidulids as the known pollinators of the pawpaw tree and one of the key pollinators for it, and pawpaw is the largest edible fruit in North America. They are the same family people already know from the picnic table.
- Clumsy, sloppy, and important anyway. McHugh’s closing line, and the one Griffin picked up on air. It works as the takeaway slide for any group.
Resources to Share
- Great Southeast Pollinator Census: August 21 and 22, 2026. Uploading opens at 12:01 a.m. on the first day, and counts can be submitted from a phone for the first time this year.
- Great Southeast Pollinator Census website: PowerPoints for training a garden club, videos on how to count, educator lessons and games, rack cards and bookmarks, the “I Counted” stickers, and the insect mascot artwork. Griffin’s ask was that anyone who has not looked at it do so ASAP.
- Insect mascots by Megan McCoy: made for the census and free to use on T-shirts, hats, flyers, and school signs. No permission needed.
- bugguide.net: McHugh’s recommendation for beetle identification, with photographs of all different kinds of beetles.
- Beetles of Eastern North America, Arthur V. Evans: the book McHugh told the audience to buy. He said it illustrates essentially every beetle genus in the southeastern United States, with descriptions, diagnoses, and biology.
- Georgia Museum of Natural History: McHugh curates the arthropod collection, over 2.2 million specimens.
- Two Facebook pages: the census community page (over 10,000 members, photos and discussion) and a separate page for event listings.
- Census newsletter on hosting an event: sign up through the census website.
- North Carolina: Amanda Bratcher has NC State-branded material for event hosts and is building a map of North Carolina census events.
Processed for UGA Center for Urban Agriculture / Great Southeast Pollinator Course · gsepc.org
Source: Stage 2 Archive Package, GTBOP_Archive_Summary_2026-07-28_Beetles.md
Secondary source for session structure and the unanswered coontie question: GTBOP_ProcessingLog_2026-07-28_Beetles.md