About Berberomeloe castuo Sánchez-Vialas, García-París, Ruiz & Recuero, 2020
Berberomeloe castuo is a species in the genus Berberomeloe, which belongs to the tribe Lyttini of the family Meloidae — the family of beetles also called oil beetles or blister beetles. This species was formerly classified as Berberomeloe majalis. B. castuo beetles are wingless. In their larval stage, they are parasites of solitary bees, while adult B. castuo act as pollinators. Their most distinctive characteristic is a bulky abdomen. Populations in the southwestern Iberian Peninsula, including southern Portugal and southwestern Spain, have individuals with uniform black coloration. In comparison, specimens from populations north of the Sistema Central mountain range — which cover northern Portugal and the Spanish provinces of Ourense, León, and Zamora — usually have wider abdominal transverse bars than southern and central populations. Members of this species can have distinctive abdominal transverse bars. In most populations in the Extremadura region, these bars are yellow to orange. The color shifts to deep red in areas ranging northward to the Sistema Central mountain range. This species lives across the entire western region of the Iberian Peninsula, including all of Portugal and the westernmost parts of Spain, with a range extending from Ourense to Huelva.
