Xenostrongylus histrio

Thomas Vernon Wollaston published this drawing in his book ‘Insecta Maderensia’ in 1854. In the book he thanks Westwood for providing the illustrations, ‘Particularly, however, would I draw attention to the valuable help which I have received from J. O. Westwood, Esq., whose pencil has been so elaborately employed in the figures which I am thus enabled to attach, and by whom many of the minutest of the dissections were accomplished, — with a degree of delicacy, moreover, to which I did not myself at the commencement of this Work (though I have since succeeded in anatomizing the larger portion of them, likewise) lay claim.’

105. Xenostrongylus histrio, Woll (Tab. II. fig. 8.). Wollaston wrote the following about this species:

‘One of the most elegant of the Madeiran Coleoptera [...] It occurs throughout most of the islands of the group, and in certain positions in the greatest abundance. Typically, it is an inhabitant of lichen (particularly of the Ramalina scopulorm and the Evernia prunastri),—in the bunches of which on the exposed weather-beaten rocks of Porto Santo and the Dezerta Grande I have observed it, hybernating, literally by thousands. [...] Thus, during April 1848, I captured it even in the gardens near Funchal, on the leaves of plants (especially those of the Sinapis tribe) and in an exceedingly active state. A few weeks later however it was in far greater abundance on the mountain-slopes of Porto Santo, where immediately below the extreme summit of the Pico de Facho it existed in the utmost profusion. In May of 1849, whilst encamped with the Rev. R. T. Lowe high up in the Ribeiro de Santa Luzia, I took it in considerable numbers from amongst the vegetation which clothes the lofty perpendicular edges of the ravine.’