Written by This is a short post about a seriously underrated and overlooked stag beetle species: Prosopocoilus suturalis. Prosopocoilus suturalis is a relatively small species, males measure up to 5 cm, They have a nice sulphur-yellow coloration, which fades into more brownish when dead. This makes specimen look rather dull, and different from what they look like when alive. They have a brown marking in the middle of the elytra, which continues on the thorax, and then splits into a V-shape on the head and continues over the mandibles. Quite beautiful, this GenY stag beetle.
Prosopocoilus suturalis minor male from Thailand
The range of Prosopocoilus suturalis is quite impressive, they start in North India, Bhutan, Myanmar, with a population on Andaman Islands, over to Thailand, China, Laos and North Vietnam. If you look at the prices for specimen, they are always very cheap, which indicates that they are quite common throughout their range. They do have a rather secretive lifestyle and are not encountered much during the day.
Prosopocoilus suturalis breeding group from Thailand
I did get an old trio from a friend in August 2018, and set them up for breeding. They are supposedly a WF3 (meaning third generation from wild caught parents) from Thailand. They do like to lay their eggs into rather soft white-rotten wood, and for the breeding setup, I placed these wood pieces on top of a compressed layer of white-rotten sawdust. The original trio lived only for a week (they were quite old after all), but laid around 10 eggs, which hatched quite fast into larvae. I had separated these into 250ml containers, filled with white-rotten wood, where they also pupated after 6 months. The females are small, so pupation was a bit earlier for them than for the males. But even the males were just a month or so behind. Once they hatched, they became active within a few weeks and I set them up for breeding in April again. I did feed them with beetle jelly, but Prosopocoilus suturalis seems to be one of those stag beetles that do not eat much or at all as imagines. I did see the male quite frequently in the evenings, while the females stayed hidden under the wood logs. However, it is easy to check whether they are reproducing: Check for gnaw marks on the pieces of wood, they are a sure sign that eggs are being laid.
Prosopocoilus suturalis minor male in artificial cocoon from Thailand
Prosopocoilus suturalis minor male in artificial cocoon from Thailand
I will soon check for larvae and separate those. With kinshi, or even good flake soil, it should not be a problem to rear telodont males. This is something I am planning for this generation. As Prosopocoilus suturalis is quite small, I think a 5-10 litre container is more than sufficient for egg laying, and will not use the large setup I had for the last two generations (I used my standard 22 litre boxes) If you keep them on the moister side, they do create very few issues. I also had no losses during pupation, which is probably also because they did not pupate at the extreme bottom of the container, but rather in the middle.
Prosopocoilus suturalis female from Thailand
If you are planning to start breeding Lucanidae or just want to have something simple for a change, Prosopocoilus suturalis would be my recommendation.
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