One of the joys of cool students (who eventually turn into cool alums) is they send you pointers to crazy weird stuff they find on-line. Like photos of carrion beetles!
OK, so the photo itself probably doesn’t wow you (unless you’re another carrion beetle), but the write up on this little critter is pretty cool. The real kicker, though, is the follow-up post and photo.
All those little red guys are mites that hitch a ride on the underside of the beetle, and you might reasonably wonder why the beetle tolerates them (esp. in such numbers).
Because they eat fly eggs and maggots which present a real threat to the carrion beetles’ wee ones. Because the flies, well, fly, they can get to the dead bodies faster than the beetles typically can, and their maggots can strip a little mouse corpse before the carrion beetle couple can get their brood up and running. So the beetles are quite happy to bring along a gaggle of mites, who then clear out any fly bits without bothering the beetles or their offspring.
A rockin’ example of symbiosis if I ever saw one. Tip o’ the cap to MJ for the pointers, and to insectpod.com for the photos and explanation of what’s going on.
