American carrion beetle
| American carrion beetle | ||||||||||||
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American carrion beetle ( Necrophila americana ) |
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| Scientific name | ||||||||||||
| Necrophila americana | ||||||||||||
| ( Linnaeus , 1758) |
The American carrion beetle ( Necrophila americana ) is a species of the carrion beetle (Silphidae). It is widespread in eastern North America.
features
Adults
The beetles are 13 to 20 millimeters long. The body shape is broadly oval, with the abdomen being longer than the wing covers and protruding backwards. The pronotum is ivory to yellowish, usually with a black central spot (discal spot), its surface is very finely dotted to wrinkled. The cover wings ( elytra ) are colored brown black, in the females in the northern part of the range typically elongated something yellow tips. They have three distinct longitudinal keels. The spaces between the keels are roughly wrinkled, the irregular wrinkles can reach the same height as the keels. The hind wings are about 1.4 centimeters long, the species, like most scavengers, can fly. The head, antennae and underside of the body are black. There are no similar species in its natural range.
Larvae
The larvae are elongated, flattened (described as "isle-shaped") and black in color. The Urogomphi , two processes at the rear end, are relatively short, hardly longer than the tenth abdomen segment, and bipartite. The antennas are relatively short and consist of three segments, the second and third of which are about the same length. The second antenna segment carries a conspicuous group of three sensory fields.
Occurrence
The animals occur in the Nearctic in large parts of eastern North America from Nova Scotia ( Canada ) in the north, south to Florida . The western border of the distribution runs through Manitoba and eastern Texas . The species is common in its range and one of the most common carrion beetles in many regions. The species prefers relatively cool, moist habitats such as forests and swamps.
Way of life
Beetles and larvae are scavengers , and the adults also feed predatory on fly maggots that live on carrion. The larvae mainly feed on the dry tendons and skins of older corpses, after most of the soft tissue has already decayed or used by other predators. The species is predominantly diurnal. The larvae develop from around the end of May to mid-July, newly transformed beetles can be observed in July and August. Later they seek hiding places where they winter; they are active again the following spring (one generation per year, univoltin ). The development from egg to imago takes about 10 to 12 weeks.
mimicry
The adults are similar in flight to the cuckoo bumblebee Bombus (Psithyrus) ashtoni and are protected by this similarity against predation by birds (Bates'sche mimicry ).
Taxonomy and systematics
The species was of Linnaeus in 1758 as Silpha americana described , it is the type species of the genus Necrophila Kirby & Spence . The genus Necrophila comprises about 20 species, with the main distribution in East Asia. Necrophila americana is the only American species. It is the only species of the subgenus Necrophila ; the subgenus Deutosilpha , Calosilpha , Chrysosilpha and Eusilpha are purely Asian. After a phylogenomic analysis (based on the comparison of homologous DNA sequences), Hiroshi Ikeda and colleagues came to the conclusion that the species is the sister group of all other species in the genus (although not all have been tested yet).
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literature
- Ross H. Arnett, Jr., Michael C. Thomas: American Beetles, Volume I: Archostemata, Myxophaga, Adephaga, Polyphaga: Staphyliniformia. CRC Press, 2000. ISBN 978-0-8493-1925-9 limited preview on Google Books
- Hiroshi Ikeda, Takashi Kagaya, Kohei Kubota, Toshio Abe (2008): Evolutionary relationships among food habit, loss of flight, and reproductive traits: life-history evolution in the Silphinae (Coleoptera: Silphidae). Evolution 62 (8): 2065-2079. doi: 10.1111 / j.1558-5646.2008.00432.x
- Brett C. Ratcliffe: The Carrion Beetles (Coleoptera: Silphidae) of Nebraska. Bulletin of the University of Nebraska State Museum Volume 13, 1996.
- RM Fisher & RD Tuckerman (1986): Mimicry of bumble bees and cuckoo bumble bees by carrion beetles (Coleoptera: Silphidae). Journal of the Kansas Entomological Society 50: 20-25.
Web links
- American Carrion Beetle at americaninsects.net , accessed November 3, 2015