Augosoma centaurus
| African Hercules beetle | ||||||||||||
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African Hercules beetle ( Augosoma centaurus , male) |
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| Scientific name | ||||||||||||
| Augosoma centaurus | ||||||||||||
| ( Fabricius , 1775) |
The African Hercules Beetle or Centauruskäfer ( Augosoma centaurus , partly Dynastes centaurus ), is a kind from the family of scarab beetles . Together with the goliath beetle ( Goliathus goliatus ) it is one of the largest beetles on the African continent.
features
The male of the African Hercules beetle reaches a body length of up to nine centimeters (measured with horn), females up to 5.5 centimeters. The animals have a wingspan of up to 15 centimeters. Beetles of both sexes are shiny red-brown in color. Especially in the male, the elytra are usually a little lighter in color than the almost black-brown head. The males wear a long, forward-pointing horn of variable length (up to three centimeters) on the pronotum. Near the base of the horn sit two side-facing downward teeth (up to 0.5 centimeters long). The head shield ( clypeus ) bears another, somewhat shorter, backward-curved horn (up to two centimeters), on the upper edge of which sits another flattened tooth; both horns together form a forceps-like structure. On the pronotum, the females have two small, almost invisible horns standing next to each other, only around 1.5 millimeters long. The antennae are very short in both sexes and carry the usual leaf club of the Scarabaeidae. In contrast to those of the males, the front rails of the females are much shorter and stronger and thus designed as tools for burying the eggs.
distribution
The beetle is common in tropical West and Central Africa. Its distribution area extends from Guinea eastwards via Liberia to Cameroon and from there south-eastwards to the Congo Basin and Rwanda . Here he lives less in the moist primary forest areas, but rather secondary forest areas and cultivated land with their extreme amounts of dead wood (clearing, sawmills). It is often found near sawmills. Gatter (1986) counted 50 to 100 specimens per night in brightly lit sawmills in Liberia, especially in October and November. In a concurrent program to research the bird life of the Liberian rainforests, in which around 200 linear meters of bird nets were constantly set up, many different species of rhinoceros and longhorn beetles were caught in the dense forest. Dynastes centaurus was not among them.
biology
The larvae, up to 10 centimeters long, live in modern wood, on which they feed.
The distinctive headphones serve the males as weapons in the fight for females. The males can stridulate by rubbing the posterior end of the elytra over a rough plate of the abdomen . This is how they challenge rivals. If a rival accepts the challenge, the animals hit each other with their horns. With the movable lower horn, the beetle can also grasp the competitors during fights and turn them on its back. It can also grab predators and press these or their limbs with the lower horn against the two pointed upper teeth (a painful experience even for human fingers).
As with many scarab beetles, there are also female males without horns. These forms arise when the larva cannot find enough food in the developmental stage. Gatter (1986) observed a striking number of these forms of hunger during the beetles' flight time, which followed an extreme dry season in Liberia in 1982/83 , with sizes of just 3.7 centimeters for males and 3.9 centimeters for females. Gatter detected the beetles in Liberia in the years 1981–1984 mainly by means of light traps . Here the beetle has two separate flight times. The first begins with the onset of heavy rains after the main dry season in March. It ends differently in the individual years between the end of May and mid-June and before the beginning of the intermediate dry season. After the end of this dry period, the second flight season begins in September. In Liberia, the number of beetles reaches its year-round high in October. After the main dry season begins in November, the number of beetles then decreases rapidly. Males and females have different approach peaks in the two separate flight times. The females have a higher proportion in March, at the beginning of the first flight time, while in June, at the end of the first flight time, the proportion of males is larger.
Most of the time, the beetles live tied to a specific location and do not cover large distances in flight. Gatter marked the beetles and put the number of recaptures at around 40 percent in the following days.
Commercial importance
In Liberia, the beetles are regularly caught by members of the Grebo ethnic group in light sources or their larvae are dug up from rotting plant material. They are cooked in palm butter and consumed as a delicacy. Wild-caught beetles and sales of beetles to collectors and lovers of rarities - as they are known from the South American Hercules beetle ( Dynastes hercules ) - play a rather minor role in Africa. Locally, Augosoma centaurus is considered a strong pest in palm plantations in the West African coastal countries. The beetle hardly played a role as a pest in Liberia in the 1980s, as its natural habitat was still extensively preserved. In forest areas, the locals tend to view it as a farm animal because it is edible.
Individual evidence
- ^ Volkshochschule Reutlingen GmbH (ed.): GO - magazine of the Zeitenspiegel reportage school Günter Diel . No. 6 . Reutlingen June 2011, p. 35 .
- ^ Gatter, Peer (1986): Notes on the biology of the Hercules beetle Dynastes cenfaurus (Fabricius) in Liberia (Coleoptera: Dynastinae) . Entomological Journal (Essen) 96 (3), p. 17
- ↑ a b Gatter, Peer (1986): Notes on the biology of the Hercules beetle Dynastes cenfaurus (Fabricius) in Liberia (Coleoptera: Dynastinae) . Entomologische Zeitschrift (Essen) 96 (3), pp. 21-22
- ^ Gatter, Peer (1986): Notes on the biology of the Hercules beetle Dynastes cenfaurus (Fabricius) in Liberia (Coleoptera: Dynastinae) . Entomological Journal (Essen) 96 (3), p. 19
- ↑ a b Gatter, Peer (1986): Notes on the biology of the Hercules beetle Dynastes cenfaurus (Fabricius) in Liberia (Coleoptera: Dynastinae) . Entomological Journal (Essen) 96 (3), p. 20
- ^ Gatter, Peer (1986): Notes on the biology of the Hercules beetle Dynastes cenfaurus (Fabricius) in Liberia (Coleoptera: Dynastinae) . Entomologische Zeitschrift (Essen) 96 (3), pp. 17-18
- ↑ Endrödi, S. (1976): Monograph of the Dynastinae. Acta zool. Acad. be. hung. 22, pp. 252-254
- ^ Gatter, Peer (1986): Notes on the biology of the Hercules beetle Dynastes cenfaurus (Fabricius) in Liberia (Coleoptera: Dynastinae) . Entomological Journal (Essen) 96 (3), p. 18
literature
- Peer Gatter: Notes on the biology of the Hercules beetle Dynastes centaurus (Fabricius) in Liberia (Coleoptera: Dynastinae) . Entomologische Zeitschrift (Essen) 96 (3): 17-32, 1986
Web links
- Biology of Augosoma (Dynastes) centaurus (PDF; 1.7 MB)