Flat grain beetles (Coleoptera: Laemophloeidae) are common stored-product insect pests in Canada, infesting cereals bins, equipment and end products flour mills. We studied the cold tolerance of three most flat beetles: Cryptolestes ferrugineus, turcicus pusillus, by measuring survival at −10 °C supercooling point (SCP) for different life stages (egg, young larva, old pupa adult) reared on mixe...

Sexual selection is a major force driving the evolution of diverse reproductive traits. This evolutionary process is based on individual reproductive advantages that arise either through intrasexual competition or through intersexual choice and conflict. While classical studies of sexual selection focused mainly on differences in male mating success, more recent work has focused on the differen...

Sexual selection drives the evolution of diverse traits that provide an advantage in reproduction. In polyandrous species the traditional premating processes of male-male competition and female choice have as counterparts sperm competition and cryptic female choice (CFC) occurring during and after mating; these processes determine paternity shares of multiple males mated to the same female. I c...

This report reexamines experimentally the problem of competitive indeterminacy in mixed-species populations of the flour beetles, Tribolium confusum and T. castaneum. Indeterminacy takes the form of alternative competitive outcomes: in some replicate cultures one species exterminates the other with a probability, say p, whereas in others, the opposing species wins with a complementary probabili...

Parasite effects on host fitness and immunology are often intensity-dependent. Unfortunately, only few experimental studies on insect-parasite interactions attempt to control the level of infection, which may contribute substantial variation to the fitness or immunological parameters of interest. The tapeworm Hymenolepis diminuta-flour beetle Tenebrio molitor model-has been used extensively for...

Data from long-term Tribolium castaneum (Herbst) pheromone trapping programs in two flour mills was used to evaluate the impact of structural fumigations (n = 23) on pest populations. The two mills differed in mean number of beetles captured and proportion of traps with captures of one or more beetles, but in one of the mills the mean number of beetles captured was reduced after implementing a ...