Fungus beetles can be reliably found by trails where damp suffuses the air and ample deadwood litters the forest floor, providing nourishment to the hyphae of basidiomycetous fungi, whose fruiting bodies in turn feed new generations of mycophagous insects. Two groups of beetles share this broad label: the pleasing hordes of Erotylidae and the handsome ranks of Endomychidae. Both families tend to be dull black and hairless, with reddish, yellow or orange markings, but pleasing fungus beetles are generally more streamlined in profile, with a convex body bearing striking zig-zag lines on the elytra. The most commonly encountered Endomychids are rather less elongate, even squat, and display variable sprinklings of spots or specks on their sclerotised forewings, which may also have broad margins that partially conceal the hindlegs.
The beetles probably form a chain of aposematism, using their bold patterns, and in some, a foetid smell, to warn off predators before a fatal bite. Against intrusive fingers, however, they often resort to rolling off their perch to lose their pursuers in a tangle of low vegetation. Not a few endomychids in the tribe Amphisternini also sport elytral projections that may serve a defensive function, borne as they are by both sexes. In Spathomeles, the spines may assume the shape of high tubercles or resemble the dorsal fins of sharks and whales. Another genus, Amphisternus, sprouts thick, blunt excrescences, while Cacadaemon has tall, keel-like protuberances, and in one exuberant Bornean species, a battery of spikes arising from the pronotum to the tip of the wingcase.
The possession of such armature, along with potent chemical deterrents, may have encouraged a curious beetle to place itself, late one mildewy afternoon, on a low blade by a well-trodden path. Endomychidean in build, poise and colouration, though markedly smaller than the black and yellow species that inhabits the undersides of bracket fungi, the beetle has a pronotal flap that extends into a blunt shield around the head. The anterior fringe of each elytra forms a short ridge ending in a pigmented knob. Most eye-catching of all are two rearward-pointing processes with thickened bases, which simmer with a menace ill-befitting a beast of mouldy appetites. The creature matches, with some hazardous nips and tucks, the description of either Amphisternus vomeratus or A. malaccanus, both of which have been reported from Malacca. Little more can be said about the insect, for it was a quarry unsought for on a day of dragon-hunting, and, quite possibly, a prize unreckoned in the records of a land too mean to account for such small, scurrilous losses.