Biology of the Flour Beetles, Tribolium Con- Fusum Duv. and T. Ferrugineum Fab.^

The flour beetles have long been known to be among the more serious pests of flour, meal, and other cereal products. Numerous references in the literature give ample evidence of their importance as destroyers of these foodstuffs. However, owing probably to the rather long adult life of these insects and the difficulties in observing the immature stages, no thorough work has been done on their life history. Several suppositions of early authors regarding the life cycle have been copied and recopied until now these statements, often erroneous, are accepted as facts. The following preliminary account is a summary of rather extensive experiments on these two species commenced by the writer in the latter part of 1929.