Bessbug

• The adults care for their larvae and feed them wood chewed and mixed with their own faeces, something exceptional among beetles.
• It communicates with at least fourteen distinct sounds produced by stridulation, and the larvae stridulate too, rubbing their hind legs, which are reduced and turned into sound-producing organs.
• It is a key decomposer: its galleries speed up the breakdown of fallen logs and open the way for fungi and other invertebrates.
• It talks. It produces at least fourteen distinct sounds by rubbing its wings against its abdomen, and the larvae reply with a mechanism of their own, rubbing their hind legs against the middle ones. It is one of the richest acoustic repertoires known in a beetle.
• It is subsocial: the adults live with their larvae in the same gallery, feed them pre-digested wood and repair the nest, a prolonged form of parental care that is very rare among beetles.
• It cannot digest wood on its own: it depends on its gut microbiota and on fungi that grow in the galleries.
• Its ecological role is important: it speeds up the decomposition of fallen trunks, and its galleries create microhabitat for other species.
• It is harmless and easy to keep, which is why it is routinely used in biology classes to demonstrate acoustic communication in insects.

Skeleton type

Invertebrate - chitin exoskeleton (insect)

Habitat and environment

Fallen rotting logs of North American deciduous forest

Sexual maturity

Siblings of different ages live together in the same gallery system and the older ones help to raise the younger

Gestation / incubation

The full cycle lasts 14 to 16 months, with three larval instars that go on for at least a year inside the trunk

Litter / clutch size

The parents form a monogamous pair and both care for the brood over the long term: they dig and maintain the galleries, move the eggs, repair the pupal chambers and feed the larvae on chewed wood pulp

Sources consulted: Schuster (1983); Buchler et al. (1981), Animal Behaviour; Universidad de Florida, Featured Creatures; NCBI PMC6628224; ficha de especie de Odontotaenius disjunctus; NCBI PMC6628224, linajes geneticos de Odontotaenius disjunctus; NCBI PMC6628224, cooperacion entre progenitores y descendencia; NCBI PMC5746793

Best time: Present all year inside decaying hardwood trunks, chiefly oak and hickory; it raises the larvae in the summer months