Hi all,
I am conducting an investigation on the abdominal vibration behavior of Coniontis, Eusattus, and possibly other members of the Coniontini (it is unclear whether Coelus and the rarely seen Conisattus vibrate) present in the US and Canada.
If you see or think you see a specimen vibrating rapidly, I would appreciate it if you took a GIF or Youtube video, attached it to your iNat observation, and @-ed me. Note that many coniontines only vibrate occasionally, so you may have to watch them for considerable periods of time before you see one doing so.
Audio recordings are fine too; however, since the sound a vibrating coniontine makes varies depending on what object it is under, and on certain substrates no sound is produced at all, I strongly prefer visual recordings. I cannot accept dead specimens in the mail for dissection/keying though. You are welcome to post your nonliving Coniontini on iNat, but due to severe taxonomic difficulties within Coniontis it is currently impossible to ID either living or dead specimens past genus for the most part.
Thanks!