Buprestidae species, u, back, Krugar National Park, South Africa

Beetles from Kruger National Park in South Africa. This is the start of a series of pictures of insects that come to the flowers in Kruger. This is a project led by James Harrison from S.A. and Jonathan Mawdsley from the U.S. I was lucky enough to come along and do some bee collecting. Interesting system. When we were there it was very droughty, only moderate tree bloom and very little herbaceous bloom. Trees are pollinated to a great extent by beetles with bees being what appeared to be not that prominent. Here is a selection of some of the lovely beetles we found. Identifications by Jonathan Mawdsley. Pictures by Kelly Graninger or Anders Croft. Photography Information: Canon Mark II 5D, Zerene Stacker, Stackshot Sled, 65mm Canon MP-E 1-5X macro lens, Twin Macro Flash in Styrofoam Cooler, F5.0, ISO 100, Shutter Speed 200 USGSBIML Photoshopping Technique: Note that we now have added using the burn tool at 50% opacity set to shadows to clean up the halos that bleed into the black background from "hot" color sections of the picture.