The importance of symbiotic microbes to insects cannot be overstated; however, we have a poor understanding of the evolutionary processes that shape most insect-microbe interactions. Many bark beetle (Coleoptera: Curculionidae, Scolytinae) species are involved in what have been described as obligate mutualisms with symbiotic fungi. Beetles benefit through supplementing their nutrient-poor diet ...

Cattle farming is a major source of greenhouse gases (GHGs). Recent research suggests that GHG fluxes from dung pats could be affected by biotic interactions involving dung beetles. Whether and how these effects vary among beetle species and with assemblage composition is yet to be established. To examine the link between GHGs and different dung beetle species assemblages, we used a closed cham...

ETHNOPHARMACOLOGICAL RELEVANCE Beetles of the family Meloidae (blister beetles) are often reported in pharmacological literature because of their content of cantharidin. Cantharidin has a long history in human medicine and was commonly applied in the 19th and the early 20th centuries, although its use has been progressively abandoned since then. Contrary to most, even common, large species of C...

Nature of Work: Japanese beetles, Popillia japonica Newman, are destructive, polyphagous insects that feed on over 300 different plant species, including many ornamental landscape plants. Since their introduction into the United States, Japanese beetles have spread rapidly throughout the Eastern United States with isolated populations in the Western United States and Canada. Due to the large nu...

Here, we describe several field experiments that evaluated potential problems with current methods of trapping cerambycid beetles using panel traps baited with synthesized pheromones. Positioning traps at least 5 m apart in linear transects was effective in preventing unbaited traps from intercepting beetles that were flying to baited traps, which would result in interference between treatments...

of children by these very peculiar beetles. Whether they enter by the mouth as an egg and undergo development into larva and pupa and finally into the adult beetle within the intestines, or whether they enter per rectum while children defecate in the open is not certain. Senior-White was the first to note that Onthophagus bifasciatus. Fb. (Copridae) infested the intestines. I have since observe...

In August 2010 the coffee berry borer, Hypothenemus hampei, was first reported to have invaded the Kona coffee growing region of Hawaii, posing a severe economic challenge to the fourth largest agricultural commodity in the State. Despite its long and widespread occurrence throughout the tropics as the most serious pest of coffee, there are still discrepancies in the literature regarding severa...

Males and females often differ in their susceptibility and exposure to infection. Thus, they may also differ in their ability to avoid infection. The beetle, Tenebrio molitor, risks infection with cysticercoids when ingesting rat feces containing eggs of the tapeworm, Hymenolepis diminuta. Previous studies demonstrated that beetles sometimes prefer infective feces suggesting that the tapeworm i...

We explore the physiological constraints of body temperature as related to body mass and ambient temperature during flight in endothermic dung beetles showing a mass-related breakpoint where species show strong vs. weak endothermy. We found two different strategies in the dung beetles prior to flight; larger beetles (>1.9 g) elevate and maintain their body temperature (T(b)) at levels well abov...

Data on dry biomass and body length are given for 47 species of dung beetles from the southern part Russian Far East. The length-to-body weight relation in specimens dung-beetles was calculated, to enable be estimated information about length. Shown, selection optimal models length-weight relationship depends types trophodynamic relationships its size classes. When conducting ecological studies...