Dung beetles (Coleoptera: Scarabaeoidea) support numerous ecosystem functions in livestock-grazed pastures. Exposure to veterinary anthelmintic residues in livestock dung can have lethal and sublethal effects on dung beetles, and can reduce rates of dung removal, but the immediate and longer-term consequences for other dung beetle mediated functions have rarely been studied. We investigated the...

Introduction Associations between bark beetles (Coleoptera: Curculionidae: Scolytinae, or family Scolytidae, depending on the classification used, Bright 1993; Marvaldi et al. 2002) and fungi are varied and well known, but mycophagy (fungal feeding) by bark beetles has received relatively little attention. This may be due to the rarity or relative unimportance of fungal feeding by bark beetles,...

Ingesting nutritionally imbalanced food can cause a significant reduction in fitness in insects. Insects can avoid the negative consequences of nutritional imbalances by selectively foraging for nutritionally complementary foods. We investigated the ability of the omnivorous beetle, Tenebrio molitor (Coleoptera: Tenebrionidae), to redress nutritional imbalances by selecting complementary foods....

The success of beetles is mainly attributed to the possibility to hide the hindwings under the sclerotised elytra. The acquisition of the transverse folding function of the hind wing is an important event in the evolutionary history of beetles. In this study, the morphological and functional variances in the hind wings of 94 leaf beetle species (Coleoptera: Chrysomelinae) is explored using geom...

We conducted laboratory and Þeld bioassays to characterize the pheromone system of an ash bark beetle, Hylesinus pruinosus Eichhoff (Coleoptera: Curculionidae: Scolytinae). Solitary females in newly initiated galleries in ash logs produced ( )-exo-brevicomin, whereas male beetles paired with females produced ( )-endo-brevicomin, lesser quantities of ( )-exo-brevicomin, and a third compound that...

Mites of family Erythraeidae are parasites in their larval stage and predators in their post-larval stages on a variety of arthropods, among which are important pest species. During 2011-2013, in a faunistic survey of mites associated with beetles of the family Chrysomelidae in Oil and Gas company of Gachsaranregion, Iran. Specimens were preserved in AG (alcohol 75%, glyserin 5%), cleared in la...

The darkling beetle, Sternoplax souvorowiana (Reitter) (Coleoptera: Tenebrionidae), is flightless and lives in the Guerbantonggut desert in northwestern China. Its special eggshell structure, day-active habit, large body size, short life cycle, and ease of rearing under laboratory conditions make it an excellent model for advanced studies on desert adaptation. Determining the sex of this beetle...

BACKGROUND The susceptibilities of adult and larval lesser mealworms, Alphitobius diaperinus (Panzer), to two commercially formulated insecticides, cyfluthrin and tetrachlorvinphos, were examined through exposure on treated plywood panels. Lesser mealworms were collected from four caged-layer poultry farms, three in New York and one in Maine. An additional strain was obtained from an infestatio...

Microdera punctipennis Kaszab (Coleoptera: Tenebrionidae) is an endemic species in Guerbantonggut desert in China. To explore the ways that M. punctipennis egg adapts to dry desert environment, morphological characteristics of the egg was investigated along with the egg of the nondesert beetle Tenebrio molitor (Coleoptera: Tenebrionidae). Water loss rate and survival rate of these eggs under di...