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Threats
Overall habitat destruction, possibly DDT and other
pesticides.
STATUS:
ESA -- ENDANGERED
IUCN -- CRITICALLY ENDANGERED
SIZE:
Lenght:
1-1.4 inches
(2.5Ð3.6 cm)
HABITAT:
Mature, virgin forests, scrub thickets, coastal grasslands, and pasture
POPULATION:
Unknown but critical. Fewer than 1,000 in Rhode Island and Massachussetts
CURRENT RANGE:
New York, New Hampshire, Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota
CONSERVATION:
Captive breeding and release; on Nantucket
Island, Massachusetts, planned release for
summer of 1997
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Nature's Undertakers
On a moonlit night in southeastern Oklahoma, a battle is raging around the carcass of a field mouse. The contestants are inch-long shiny black beetles with bright orange spots on the plates behind their heads. There are rules to the conflict: males fight males, females fight females. Eventually, one male and one female emerge victorious, driving the others away. They are now a couple, and the dead mouse is theirs. Digging furiously, they excavate the soil beneath the carcass until, several hours later, it is completely buried.
Underground, the two beetles cover the body with a secretion from their mouths and anuses that strips away the mouse's hair and preserves the remains. Then the female lays her eggs near the body. They hatch in a
few days, and the young are fed from the carcass. To get a meal, the larvae stroke their parents' jaws. This goes on for about 50 days, when the larvae emerge as adults. This is the most complex form of parental teamwork yet discovered among beetles.
Once found throughout the eastern and midwestern U.S. and much of eastern Canada, American burying beetles have been disappearing rapidly since the 1960s. By 1979, only two populations were known: one in Oklahoma and another in Rhode Island. In 1989, additional populations were discovered in Nebraska and Arkansas, but the beetle has apparently vanished elsewhere. The causes are unclear, although pesticides, habitat fragmentation, and competition by other scavengers have all been suggested. It's also possibleÑbut unlikelyÑthat this
population collapse is part of a natural cycle. Whatever the reasons, the American burying beetle has disappeared from 99 percent of its previous range. |
