The amazing life of beetles

[William Gaatjes]

It is a bit of old news , i searched for post but did not see any in the short time that i traversed through the search results.:

Amazing, a beetle larva that dodges attacks from an amphibian predator and then turns into the predator itself :

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2011/09/epomis-beetle-amphibians/

Baby Beetle Uses Mouth to Lure Amphibians to Their Doom

Voracious larvae of two recently discovered beetles can latch onto frogs, toads, and other amphibians many times their size, then devour them. How the bugs entice their prey and survive their attacks, however, wasn’t known until now.
Researchers have witnessed the worm-like larvae of predatory Epomis ground beetles in action. The fingertip-sized larvae perform a dazzling dance to lure large prey to their doom.
“The amphibians don’t stand a chance. They can’t ignore the moving larvae because, if they do, something is wrong with their instincts,” said entomologist Gil Wizen of the University of Toronto, leader of a study about the deadly bugs published Sept. 21 in PLoS ONE.
“Normally amphibians eat small larvae, so the larvae seem to be taking their revenge here,” he said.

A scanning electron microscope's view of Epomis ground beetle larvae. The spiked mandibles help the larvae both dazzle and latch onto their prey. Top: E. dejeani. Bottom: E. circumscriptus. (G. Wizen et al./PLoS ONE)

In 2005, Wizen and his colleague Avital Gasith of Tel Aviv University found a toad in Israel with the larvae of a ground beetle species called Epomis dejeani latched onto its skin. They brought the duo back to the lab and learned the larvae — unlike any other beetle species — fed exclusively on amphibians to grow into adulthood.
Years later, they discovered that adults of E. dejeani and a second species, E. circumscriptus, could also dine on much larger amphibians.
How the larvae of either species latched onto the amphibians and reduced them to “only a pile of bones,” however, wasn’t known. So Wizen and Gasith closely monitored hungry Epomis larvae after introducing a toad, frog, or salamander into their cage.
The closer an amphibian moved toward a beetle larva, the more wildly the larva moved its antennae up and down or from side to side. Some larvae opened and closed their thorny mandibles while waving their antennae.
The dance of mouth parts seemed to lure amphibians into attacking.
“Amphibians hunt by movement,” Wizen said. “They’ll generally go after anything that’s small, moving, and within their reach.”
When an amphibian shot out its lightning-fast tongue to eat a larva, the larva quickly bobbed its head to dodge the attack. Moments later, the larva latched onto its prey’s skin and began to suck it dry.
In attacks by 420 beetle larva, about 70 percent used a luring dance. No amphibian, however, successfully killed a larva.
Seven amphibians did capture a larva in their mouth, but each quickly spat them out. The mistake cost the amphibians their lives. Each larva recovered, latched on and ultimately ate the amphibian.
One amphibian did hold a larva in its stomach for two hours, but eventually regurgitated it. That amphibian was also eaten by the larva.
About 10 percent of predator-prey relationships in the animal kingdom result in a smaller animal eating a bigger one, but they are all active attacks — not a small creature luring its prey.
Wizen and Gasith described the strategy of Epopmis beetle larvae as an “extremely rare anti-predator behavior.”
“How a single insect genus evolved a unique role reversal … is currently an enigma,” they wrote in the study.

Graphic view :
A beetle attacking and consuming a frog :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wFJ_CXJ0qPo&feature=player_embedded



Ground beetles are amazing creatures.
The bombardier beetle is amazing, it secrets volatile very reactive fluids.
Another beetle has its own build in "super soaker" to shoot at you when you come to close : The "oogpister" .

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QL2b-tpyOyo


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ground_beetle

 

[MontyAC]

Wow, that frog had no chance.

 

[William Gaatjes]

It is weird because when i click the youtube link, i have to sign in to view it.
But from the wired website, i can watch it without signing in.
When i google for it, i can also watch it without signing in.
Strange...

 

[xSkyDrAx]

And they want us to de-arm our nukes? Fucking insane.

 

[BladeVenom]

It is weird because when i click the youtube link, i have to sign in to view it.
But from the wired website, i can watch it without signing in.
When i google for it, i can also watch it without signing in.
Strange...

Videos embedded in a website don't require you to sign in.

Things get posted to Youtube multiple times. So the same video was reposted, but the repost didn't get flagged.

 

[William Gaatjes]

Videos embedded in a website don't require you to sign in.

Things get posted to Youtube multiple times. So the same video was reposted, but the repost didn't get flagged.

I see.

 

[William Gaatjes]

Digging through all those informative texts, this is also very interesting :

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2011/07/fungus-farming-beetles/

These beetles grow fungus in the barks of trees.
But what is more amazing is that the female beetles can reproduce without using a mate. I am willing to bet that the biochemicals found inside the fungi that is grown, harvested and eaten by the beetle is responsible for that. Mimicking effects of hormones. That is not uncommon at all, fungi controlling the life cycle of a given insect species. The fungi have transport, food and control.

found in Georgia in 2005. It has a taste for trees of the Lauracae family, of which avocado is one. If redbay reaches avocado-farming regions, the damage will be immense. Another tree-killing beetle is afflicting poplar plantations in South America and Europe. Another has caused Mango Sudden Death Syndrome. A fungus that apparently jumped to a native beetle is responsible for a disease that's killing off oak trees in Japan.

These are likely the tip of the iceberg. Many invasions are just now being identified, and haven't yet been described in scientific literature. Nobody knows why the beetles are suddenly attacking living trees, but Hulcr suspects it's simply an unfortunate coincidence, an evolutionary mismatch in which beetles are confused by the odor of unfamiliar trees. They think living trees are actually dead. Then the trees, unaccustomed to such attack, have either no immune defense or an exaggerated one. Like humans exposed to an unfamiliar bug, they overreact and destroy themselves.

What can be done? Not much, said Hulcr. Even if, as appears to be the case, only a miniscule fraction of foreign beetles end up causing damage, that's enough. After all, as those 7,000 species of bark and ambrosia beetles are transported around the world, there are nearly unlimited opportunities for mismatch. According to pest surveys of shipping containers at U.S. ports-of-entry, bark beetles account for 58 percent of all intercepted insects. Stopping them is practically impossible, and just a single beetle can be enough to spawn an invasion.

"Another amazing feature of these beetles is their amazing reproductive strategies," Hulcr said. Females are often capable of self-fertilization, producing fresh generations of offspring in the absence of mate. They don't even need to bother with sons, but may have only daughters, which thanks to their rich fungal diets are ready to reproduce themselves in less than two weeks.

On the subject of fungus, Hulcr is eloquent. "They smell like white fruit. They look like puffy clouds. Sometimes they look like brown sludge. They often taste like mushrooms. So no wonder the beetles like them," he said. Asked whether he'd tasted the fungus himself, Hulcr said yes. "Wouldn't it be fascinating to grow beetle symbiotic fungus on a large scale, so we could turn wood into fruit? There are so many opportunities. This is one of the most amazing systems out there. This is so cool and it's so unexplored."