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American Carrion Beetle
The American carrion beetle (''Necrophila americana'',Species Necrophila americana - American Carrion Beetle: http://bugguide.net/node/view/6744 formerly ''Silpha americana'') is a North American beetle of the family Silphidae. It lays its eggs in, and its larvae consume, raw flesh (particularly that of dead animals) and fungi. The larvae and adults also consume fly larvae and the larvae of other carrion beetles that compete for the same food sources as its larvae. Range The beetle lives in North America east of the Rocky Mountains, with its southern boundary from eastern Texas to Florida and the northern boundary from Minnesota to southeastern Canada including New Brunswick and Maine. Appearance Adults are 12 to 22 mm long. The pronotum is primarily a pale yellow with a black spot in the center. In the southern portion of the range, the elytra are entirely black while in the northern portion they have a yellow rear tip. The elytra are shorter than the body of the beetle, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Nicrophorus Americanus
''Nicrophorus americanus'', also known as the American burying beetle or giant carrion beetle, is a critically endangered species of beetle endemic to North America. It belongs to the order Coleoptera and the family Silphidae. The carrion beetle in North America is carnivorous, feeds on carrion and requires carrion to breed. It is also a member of one of the few genera of beetle to exhibit parental care. The decline of the American burying beetle has been attributed to habitat loss, alteration, and degradation, and they now occur in less than 10% of their historic range. Description ''N. americanus'' adults are between 25 and 45 mm long and can be identified by their striking, distinctive coloring. The body is shiny black, and on each elytron (wing cover) are two scalloped, orange-red markings. Most distinctively, there is an orange-red marking on the pronotum, which distinguishes the species from all other North American '' Nicrophorus''. The front of the head has two ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Minnesota
Minnesota () is a state in the upper midwestern region of the United States. It is the 12th largest U.S. state in area and the 22nd most populous, with over 5.75 million residents. Minnesota is home to western prairies, now given over to intensive agriculture; deciduous forests in the southeast, now partially cleared, farmed, and settled; and the less populated North Woods, used for mining, forestry, and recreation. Roughly a third of the state is covered in forests, and it is known as the "Land of 10,000 Lakes" for having over 14,000 bodies of fresh water of at least ten acres. More than 60% of Minnesotans live in the Minneapolis–Saint Paul metropolitan area, known as the "Twin Cities", the state's main political, economic, and cultural hub. With a population of about 3.7 million, the Twin Cities is the 16th largest metropolitan area in the U.S. Other minor metropolitan and micropolitan statistical areas in the state include Duluth, Mankato, Moorhead, Rochester, and ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Beetles Of North America
Beetles are insects that form the order Coleoptera (), in the superorder Endopterygota. Their front pair of wings are hardened into wing-cases, elytra, distinguishing them from most other insects. The Coleoptera, with about 400,000 described species, is the largest of all orders, constituting almost 40% of described insects and 25% of all known animal life-forms; new species are discovered frequently, with estimates suggesting that there are between 0.9 and 2.1 million total species. Found in almost every habitat except the sea and the polar regions, they interact with their ecosystems in several ways: beetles often feed on plants and fungi, break down animal and plant debris, and eat other invertebrates. Some species are serious agricultural pests, such as the Colorado potato beetle, while others such as Coccinellidae (ladybirds or ladybugs) eat aphids, scale insects, thrips, and other plant-sucking insects that damage crops. Beetles typically have a particularly hard e ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Poecilochirus
''Poecilochirus'' is a Holarctic genus of mites in the family Parasitidae. They are relatively large (ca. 0.5-1mm) and often found on rotting corpses, where they are transported by beetles. Deuteronymphs are characterized by two orange dorsal shields and in many species a transverse band on the sternal shield. The juvenile development consists of a larval stage (three pairs of legs), protonymph, and deuteronymph, but no tritonymph. Females are smaller than males. Males guard female deuteronymphs shortly before these mate, and pairs mate venter-to-venter. Reportedly, some nematodes in the family Allantonematidae are parasites of mites in this genus. Although some species from this genus have been described and sampled on previous real forensic cases or successional studies on carcasses, their usefulness as a forensic marker in forensic entomology has been recently appreciated. Phoresy on carrion beetles At least eight species of the genus are carried from one food source to an ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mite
Mites are small arachnids (eight-legged arthropods). Mites span two large orders of arachnids, the Acariformes and the Parasitiformes, which were historically grouped together in the subclass Acari, but genetic analysis does not show clear evidence of a close relationship. Most mites are tiny, less than in length, and have a simple, unsegmented body plan. The small size of most species makes them easily overlooked; some species live in water, many live in soil as decomposers, others live on plants, sometimes creating galls, while others again are Predation, predators or Parasitism, parasites. This last type includes the commercially destructive ''Varroa'' parasite of honey bees, as well as scabies mites of humans. Most species are harmless to humans, but a few are associated with allergies or may transmit diseases. The scientific discipline devoted to the study of mites is called acarology. Evolution and taxonomy The mites are not a defined taxon, but is used for two disti ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Phoresy
Phoresis or phoresy is a non-permanent, Commensalism, commensalistic interaction in which one organism (a phoront or phoretic) attaches itself to another (the host) solely for the purpose of travel. Phoresis has been observed directly in Acari, ticks and mites since the 18th century, and indirectly in fossils 320 million years old. It is not restricted to arthropods or animals; plants with seeds that disperse by attaching themselves to animals are also considered to be phoretic. ''Phoresis'' is rooted in the Greek words ''phoras'' (bearing) and ''phor'' (thief). The term, originally defined in 1896 as a relationship in which the host acts as a vehicle for its passenger, clashed with other terminology being developed at the time, so constraints on the length of time, feeding and ontogeny are now considered. Phoresis is used as a strategy for Biological dispersal, dispersal, Migration (ecology), seasonal migration, transport to new host/habitat escaping ephemeral habitats, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mutualism (biology)
Mutualism describes the ecological interaction between two or more species where each species has a net benefit. Mutualism is a common type of ecological interaction. Prominent examples include most vascular plants engaged in mutualistic interactions with mycorrhizae, flowering plants being pollinated by animals, vascular plants being dispersed by animals, and corals with zooxanthellae, among many others. Mutualism can be contrasted with interspecific competition, in which each species experiences ''reduced'' fitness, and exploitation, or parasitism, in which one species benefits at the expense of the other. The term ''mutualism'' was introduced by Pierre-Joseph van Beneden in his 1876 book ''Animal Parasites and Messmates'' to mean "mutual aid among species". Mutualism is often conflated with two other types of ecological phenomena: cooperation and symbiosis. Cooperation most commonly refers to increases in fitness through within-species (intraspecific) interactions, althoug ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Overwintering
Overwintering is the process by which some organisms pass through or wait out the winter season, or pass through that period of the year when "winter" conditions (cold or sub-zero temperatures, ice, snow, limited food supplies) make normal activity or even survival difficult or near impossible. In some cases "winter" is characterized not necessarily by cold but by dry conditions; passing through such periods could likewise be called overwintering. Hibernation and migration are the two major ways in which overwintering is accomplished. Animals may also go into a state of reduced physiological activity known as torpor. Overwintering occurs in several classes of lifeform. Insects In entomology, overwintering is how an insect passes the winter season. Many insects overwinter as adults, pupae, or eggs. This can be done inside buildings, under tree bark, or beneath fallen leaves or other plant matter on the ground, among other places. All such overwintering sites shield the insect fr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pupate
A pupa ( la, pupa, "doll"; plural: ''pupae'') is the life stage of some insects undergoing transformation between immature and mature stages. Insects that go through a pupal stage are holometabolous: they go through four distinct stages in their life cycle, the stages thereof being egg, larva, pupa, and imago. The processes of entering and completing the pupal stage are controlled by the insect's hormones, especially juvenile hormone, prothoracicotropic hormone, and ecdysone. The act of becoming a pupa is called pupation, and the act of emerging from the pupal case is called eclosion or emergence. The pupae of different groups of insects have different names such as ''chrysalis'' for the pupae of butterflies and ''tumbler'' for those of the mosquito family. Pupae may further be enclosed in other structures such as cocoons, nests, or shells. Position in life cycle The pupal stage follows the larval stage and precedes adulthood (''imago'') in insects with complete metamorphos ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
American Carrion Beetle Larva
American(s) may refer to: * American, something of, from, or related to the United States of America, commonly known as the "United States" or "America" ** Americans, citizens and nationals of the United States of America ** American ancestry, people who self-identify their ancestry as "American" ** American English, the set of varieties of the English language native to the United States ** Native Americans in the United States, indigenous peoples of the United States * American, something of, from, or related to the Americas, also known as "America" ** Indigenous peoples of the Americas * American (word), for analysis and history of the meanings in various contexts Organizations * American Airlines, U.S.-based airline headquartered in Fort Worth, Texas * American Athletic Conference, an American college athletic conference * American Recordings (record label), a record label previously known as Def American * American University, in Washington, D.C. Sports teams Soccer * Ba ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Elytra
An elytron (; ; , ) is a modified, hardened forewing of beetles (Coleoptera), though a few of the true bugs (Hemiptera) such as the family Schizopteridae are extremely similar; in true bugs, the forewings are called hemelytra (sometimes alternatively spelled as "hemielytra"), and in most species only the basal half is thickened while the apex is membranous, but when they are entirely thickened the condition is referred to as "coleopteroid". An elytron is sometimes also referred to as a shard. Description The elytra primarily serve as protective wing-cases for the hindwings underneath, which are used for flying. To fly, a beetle typically opens the elytra and then extends the hindwings, flying while still holding the elytra open, though many beetles in the families Scarabaeidae and Buprestidae can fly with the elytra closed (e.g., most Cetoniinae; ). In a number of groups, the elytra are reduced to various degrees, (e.g., the beetle families Staphylinidae and Ripiphoridae), or ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pronotum
The prothorax is the foremost of the three segments in the thorax of an insect, and bears the first pair of legs. Its principal sclerites (exoskeletal plates) are the pronotum (dorsal), the prosternum (ventral), and the propleuron (lateral) on each side. The prothorax never bears wings in extant insects (except in some cases of atavism), though some fossil groups possessed wing-like projections. All adult insects possess legs on the prothorax, though in a few groups (e.g., the butterfly family Nymphalidae) the forelegs are greatly reduced. In many groups of insects, the pronotum is reduced in size, but in a few it is hypertrophied, such as in all beetles (Coleoptera). In most treehoppers (family Membracidae, order Hemiptera), the pronotum is expanded into often fantastic shapes that enhance their camouflage or mimicry. Similarly, in the Tetrigidae, the pronotum is extended backward to cover the flight wings, supplanting the function of the tegmina. See also *Glossary of entomolo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
_—_taking_flight%2C_frontal_view.jpg "Click for more on -> Nicrophorus Americanus")
_Lorryia_formosa_2_edit.jpg "Click for more on -> Mite")
