Common fur beetle
| Common fur beetle | ||||||||||||
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Common fur beetle ( Attagenus pellio ) |
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| Systematics | ||||||||||||
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| Scientific name | ||||||||||||
| Attagenus pellio | ||||||||||||
| ( Linnaeus , 1758) |
The common or spotted fur beetle ( Attagenus pellio ) belongs to the genus of fur beetles ( Attagenus ) in the family of bacon beetles (Dermestidae).
features
The beetles reach a body length of 3.5 to 6 millimeters. They have a black-colored, densely hairy body that has areas of light hair in places. There is one large spot in the middle of the wing near the wing cover seam, two more are located on the side behind the shoulder bulge, although these spots cannot be formed. Other spots found on pronotum basal middle and at the two corners, small stains are on the sides of the neck shield behind the center. The first and eighth to eleventh antennae are black, the second to seventh are yellow. The legs are colored brown apart from the yellowish tarsi . The two similar species Attagenus megatoma and Attagenus schaefferi can be distinguished from the common fur beetle by the lack of lightly hairy spots.
Occurrence and way of life
The animals are distributed all over the world, although they can be found in Europe, north to Lapland and also on Greenland . They are common in the British Isles . As a cultural follower , the species is rarely found in the wild in bird nests and mud, but they are very common in the vicinity of humans. The adults appear in the spring in apartments where the females lay their eggs. Later in the year the adults can also be found on the flowers of umbellifers , fruit trees, hawthorns and blackthorns . The larvae are up to 12 millimeters long and have a golden yellow color. By eating them, they can cause considerable damage to textiles, carpets, leather, furs and the like.
Web links
- Attagenus pellio in Fauna Europaea
- Spotted fur beetle in the lexicon of pests (German)
- Common fur beetle at the insect box (German)
swell
- Karl Wilhelm Harde, Frantisek Severa and Edwin Möhn: The Kosmos Käferführer: The Central European Beetles. Franckh-Kosmos Verlags-GmbH & Co KG, Stuttgart 2000, ISBN 3-440-06959-1 .
- Jiri Zahradnik, Irmgard Jung, Dieter Jung et al .: Beetles of Central and Northwestern Europe. Parey, Berlin 1985, ISBN 3-490-27118-1 .