Beneficial Passengers - _TNY_8460
While we were visiting my mother-in-law outside Härnösand, Sweden, back in July, my wife noticed something in the garden pond.
She called on me and it turned out to be a pair of banded sexton beetles (Nicrophorus investigator) busy making love when they somehow managed to end up in the cold water of the pond.
I managed to get them out of the water and onto my hand and I don't know if they were done with their sexy time or if the cold water killed the mood, but they disengaged and this one - the male opened up his elytra and took off after just a single photo while his date stayed on my finger and allowed me to take a couple of photos.
Looking closer, I discovered that both of them had a bunch of stowaways in the form of some phoretic mites. These probably belong to the Poecilochirus genus and there is only one recoginsed species in the genus in Sweden (ie Poecilochirus carabi), but there most likely more than one species around these parts - just not described.
This might look a bit gruesome, but it is actually a symbiotic relationship. These beetles locate dead animals and lay their eggs in them and the larvae then feed on the dead flesh. The mites use the beetle as a taxi service to get them to the carrion where they actually feed on fly eggs and freshly hatched maggots which otherwise would compete with the beetle larvae for the food so a beetle with mites on it is more likely to have offspring that survies to becoming adult.
A shot of this female with a little less magnification here: www.flickr.com/photos/tinyturtle/54288803416/
And of the male here: www.flickr.com/photos/tinyturtle/54350634560/
Beneficial Passengers - _TNY_8460
While we were visiting my mother-in-law outside Härnösand, Sweden, back in July, my wife noticed something in the garden pond.
She called on me and it turned out to be a pair of banded sexton beetles (Nicrophorus investigator) busy making love when they somehow managed to end up in the cold water of the pond.
I managed to get them out of the water and onto my hand and I don't know if they were done with their sexy time or if the cold water killed the mood, but they disengaged and this one - the male opened up his elytra and took off after just a single photo while his date stayed on my finger and allowed me to take a couple of photos.
Looking closer, I discovered that both of them had a bunch of stowaways in the form of some phoretic mites. These probably belong to the Poecilochirus genus and there is only one recoginsed species in the genus in Sweden (ie Poecilochirus carabi), but there most likely more than one species around these parts - just not described.
This might look a bit gruesome, but it is actually a symbiotic relationship. These beetles locate dead animals and lay their eggs in them and the larvae then feed on the dead flesh. The mites use the beetle as a taxi service to get them to the carrion where they actually feed on fly eggs and freshly hatched maggots which otherwise would compete with the beetle larvae for the food so a beetle with mites on it is more likely to have offspring that survies to becoming adult.
A shot of this female with a little less magnification here: www.flickr.com/photos/tinyturtle/54288803416/
And of the male here: www.flickr.com/photos/tinyturtle/54350634560/