Bug FAQVelvety bark beetle
Penthe pimelia · Order: Coleoptera · Family: Tetratomidae
The velvety bark beetle has a uniformly dark body, including a dark scutellum. It lives in North America. It can be told apart from the only other North American Penthe species, Penthe obliqua, which has a bright-orange scutellum.
Source: Wikipedia
How to recognize it
The beetle is uniformly dark, and its scutellum is also dark.
Source: Wikipedia
Where it lives
It is found in North America.
Source: Wikipedia
Where it comes from
Its native range is North America.
Source: Wikipedia
Lookalikes
The only other Penthe species in North America is Penthe obliqua, which has a bright-orange scutellum, unlike this beetle’s dark scutellum.
Source: Wikipedia
Where it is found in the US
Recorded in 33 of 51 states and DC. Most records: Texas, Kansas, Oklahoma, Ohio, Kentucky, Missouri, Illinois, Alabama.
Darker = more records. Counts are museum and citizen-science records, not population size.
Source: GBIF
Status: native in North America; native in Canada. Source: iNaturalist
Months it is reported in the US
Source: GBIF
More photos
Sources
- Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penthe_pimelia
Look it up elsewhere: GBIF · iNaturalist · BugGuide · ITIS · Wikipedia
Text written 2026-10-24 from the sources above and checked sentence by sentence against them. Data fetched 2026-10-24.