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These red bugs can be found in hundreds in our locality in Bangalore, India.

They are just about 3.5 cm and have these white (or maybe pale yellow) tips on their antennae.

enter image description here

Can someone identify them and suggest a link where I can find substantial information on their morphology and general behaviour?

AdDate
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2 Answers2

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I think they are called "Red Bugs" (really), otherwise known as Antilochus conquebertii (aka Antilochus coquebertii).

enter image description here

The black coloring changes from location to location. These were found in India. They were even described by the querent as eating black seeds.

Viet Nam Red Bugs are pretty as well:

enter image description here

The family Pyrrhocoridae is commonly called the Red Bug family, and the family includes the Cotton Stainers as well as the Firebugs, so Red Bugs is the more general family name that includes the other genera and species.

anongoodnurse
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    Thank you for the answer but I think it's A.conquebertii, with a double 'i' . Also where can I find some information on them? – AdDate Sep 13 '17 at 16:06
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    @AdDate, Google is your friend. – mgkrebbs Sep 13 '17 at 16:15
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    I didn't find much though. I want some more details. – AdDate Sep 13 '17 at 17:14
  • Antilochus is a sister clade of Pyrrhocoris which we call "fire bugs" (or "gendarme" in french). You'll easily find more info for Pyrrhocoris. – Remi.b Sep 13 '17 at 23:17
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    @AdDate Note by the way, that it is more polite to say "I would like" than "I want". – Remi.b Sep 13 '17 at 23:22
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    It is also spelled without the "n" in "conquebertii": Antilochus coquebertii. When I google that name, I get 2000 results, compared to 170 for the other name. And that is what is used on the (sparse) Wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antilochus_coquebertii –  Sep 14 '17 at 09:06
  • @BumptiousQBangwhistle - Thanks so much! That is a great help. I'll edit that into my answer. – anongoodnurse Sep 14 '17 at 15:18
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This question has an answer (previously) already accepted and upvoted. However, the identification is incorrect.

This insect belongs to other Genus, Melamphaus. Here is an image of Melamphaus sp:

enter image description here

The image in the (previously) accepted answer is, in fact, an image of Melamphaus, not Antilochus. What probably happened is that the source (a blog) whose image was copied is wrong. The fact that the blog got the epithet wrong (conqueberti instead of coquebertii) corroborates this.

For comparison, here is an image of Antilochus coquebertii from a reliable source, the Journal of Entomology and Zoology Studies:

enter image description here