The Burying Beetle
Copyright 2021 by Lori-Ann Willey
The Burying Beetle (a carrion beetle) is over an inch
long with orange and black coloration. I grew up seeing these beetles throughout my lifetime. It is quite similar to the controversial American Burying Beetle. Due to my own color deficiency, I mislabeled this beetle as the threatened species, and was corrected by a man named Chase Gagne, and rightfully so.
The Burying Beetle is about an inch or so long with black
and orange sections that appear jagged in coloration. Their protruding antennae are black with a
little reddish-orange “ball” at each tip that is also called knobs or clubs.
Their habits are one that may seem straight from a horror movie to some, and on the contrary, very fascinating to others. The adults bury dead carcasses so the female can lay her eggs in/on the somewhat balled-up dead remains of some small animal.
Then, the beetle covers it all
up to help hide it from other predators.
Kinda ingenious if you think about it.
I mean, dogs bury their bones for the same reason, right? Only, in this case, when the eggs hatch, the
larvae feast upon what remains of the decaying carcass. Nature’s own recycle method.
If you take a closer look at these pictures, you’ll see other
insects upon the beetle. Those are not
baby beetles, those are mites, which have a symbiotic relationship with the
beetles. A symbiotic relationship is kinda
like the phrase, “you scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours”. Meaning though different, they work together to
help each other, which in turn helps themselves. Lemme explain.
Mites climb onto the beetle (all carrion beetles, I believe)
and hitch a ride to the next/new food source -another rotting carcass. There, the mites eat the eggs of the fly
maggots that fight to compete for the food source of the beetle larvae after
they hatch. This is their symbiotic
relationship -Mites receive help from the ride to feast on the newly hatched maggots,
so the beetle larvae have a better chance at survival. Isn’t that cool?
So, next time you smell or see a carcass, take a stick and
poke around a bit. Look for this Burying
beetle.
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