Beautiful large insect for ID please

[Tasha]

My daughter took these pics while she was in Borneo, Malaysia a few weeks ago and we would love to know what it is. Countless google searches have proved fruitless, so I was hoping somebody here would know what it is. Apologies for not being able to provide a close-up or clearer pic, but these are the only two photos my daughter took of this amazing creature. She said it was approx 3in long (not including those spectacular antennae!) and was moving very slowly across the ground. Any help, or suggestions, would be very much appreciated.

Thanks for looking.

[paul m]

I should think it is a longhorn beetle (you can see where it gets the name), Coleoptera: Cerambycidae.
I'm afraid I know nothing about far Asian beetles. Cerambycidae deals with European cerambycids - there may be a clue there.
Maybe someone else knows of a reference to Asian longhorns?
Thanks for sharing the pictures - as you say, they are pretty spectacular beasts!

[goosey]

I have been having a quick look and I think it is Cerambycidae too, one of the Lamiinae. There is one which looks similar on beetles from Thailand called Diostocera wallichi tonkinensis, but I don't think it is that either, there again it is the wrong country .

[paul m]

Originally Posted by goosey

I have been having a quick look and I think it is Cerambycidae too, one of the Lamiinae. There is one which looks similar on beetles from Thailand called Diostocera wallichi tonkinensis, but I don't think it is that either, there again it is the wrong country .

I think you're very close there G - certainly the same sub-family, maybe the same genus; possibly a different species or sub-species?
We might expect some very singular species on the islands such as Borneo but we'll also see the more widespread ones which are distributed across SE Asia.

[Pudding4brains]

Howdy,

One more excellent site with many photos and searchable by country etc is cerambycoidea.com. A search for Borneo comes up with Diastocera wallichii tricincta so the (sub)sepcies mentioned by Goosey is recorded from Borneo

Some other sites that may be helpful might be:

• cerambycoidea - Gallery (mentioned above)
• lamiinae.org (Lamiaires du Monde)
• barkbeetles.org
• Flickr - Cerambycidae South East Asia

Cheers, Arp

[paul m]

How have all these sites passed me by? Where has my brain been? Thanks, Arp, these go into my memory-bank immediately!

Originally Posted by Pudding4brains

Howdy,

One more excellent site with many photos and searchable by country etc is cerambycoidea.com. A search for Borneo comes up with Diastocera wallichii tricincta so the (sub)sepcies mentioned by Goosey is recorded from Borneo

Some other sites that may be helpful might be:

• cerambycoidea - Gallery (mentioned above)
• lamiinae.org (Lamiaires du Monde)
• barkbeetles.org
• Flickr - Cerambycidae South East Asia

Cheers, Arp

[Tasha]

WOW! Thank you all so much for taking the trouble and time to help me with this ID, it's very much appreciated . I didn't even know it was a longhorn beetle species No wonder my google searches were fruitless when I was using key words such as 'metallic-blue, stripey, long antennae, etc' !!

Thanks once again for putting a name to this amazing beetle. I must confess that when my daughter first showed me this photo, I thought it was a toy crafted by one of the local natives there, and that she was just winding me up!!!!

[Pudding4brains]

According to this PDF the genus Diastocera is monotypic (only D. wallichii), with three subspecies of which only D. w. tricincta is recorded for Borneo. So, if it is Diastocera, it should indeed be the tricincta subspecies.

Wow ... there is even a Checklist of Borneo Cerambycidae available online - now all we have to do is find an image for each and every one of the species listed and then we can be fairly sure of the ID

I think I'll stick with "might well be D.w.t." for now