Whilst looking around an ancient village in An Namas I came across a number of Pachnoda beetles on a fruiting fig tree. Pacnoda is a genus from the subfamily Cetoniinae with nearly all of the species living in Africa. The genus Pachnoda presently contains over 180 taxa at the species level and reaches its greatest diversity in tropical Africa, but a limited number of species extend across the Sahel to the Palearctic region (Algeria, Egypt, Libya, Morocco and Tunisia) and across the Horn of Africa into the southern part of the Arabian Peninsula (Oman, Saudi Arabia and Yemen). The limit of the genus is given by the presence of internal lobes in their aedeagi. A number of Pacnoda beetles have been recorded in the An Namas area including Pachnoda fasciata, Pachnoda leclercqi & Pachnoda thoracica.
