CHAPTER FOUR
It's A Beetle's Life

A male firefly blazes his trail through the woods. At last he perceives a dim inconspicuous gleam, a mere spark, but it is his landing beacon and he levels off and steers straight for the wingless mate, who has laboriously climbed to the top of a fern and there hung out her signal: "Come oh come, so that the race of fireflies may go on!"
- William Beebe, High Jungle

The overwhelming number of beetle species is equally matched by the myriad ways in which they go about making a living. The life cycles and styles of beetles resemble a dance, with the dance card of each egg, larva, pupa, and adult a blur of interactions with a multitude of biotic and abiotic factors. In any single book, we can only begin to offer general remarks about the incredible diversity of ways in which beetles develop, reproduce, communicate, cooperate to raise their young, feed, defend themselves, and interact with other organisms. We know little about these fascinating creatures because they undertake only a few of their activities within our dimension of observation and understanding.


Dung beetles, such as the African Garreta nitens, use their serrated foreleg and broad hoelike head to carve out chunks of fecal material to use as food. They ingest huge quantities of dung, using their membranous mandibles to strain out remnants of undigested food, bacteria, yeasts, and molds.



 

 

The antler-like mandibles of stag beetles, family Lucanidae, particularly the males, may be monstrously developed. Although some species are capable of inflicting a painful bite, the shorter and stronger mandibles of the females are generally more powerful. Excerpted from Plate 64, this is Odontolabis femoralis, from Malaysia.

 

Beetles, such as this mating pair of melolonthine scarabs from California, Ceononycha parvula, may remain in copulatory embrace long after sufficient time for repreductive materials to be transferred has passed.