Yellow Mealworm Beetle

• In 2021 it became the first insect authorised by the European Union as human food, following a favourable opinion from the European Food Safety Authority.
• Its larvae can digest expanded polystyrene thanks to bacteria in their gut and turn it into biomass, an open line of research for treating plastic waste.
• It is one of the most widely used insects in the laboratory and in feeding reptiles, birds and fish, thanks to how easy it is to rear.
• It was the first insect authorised as a novel food in the European Union: EFSA issued a favourable opinion on the dried larva in January 2021.
• The in vitro digestibility of its protein reaches 91-99%, slightly above even that of the house cricket.
• Oven drying reduces that digestibility, and so does cutting the chitin content, although less so.
• Like the cricket, it triggers cross-reactions in people allergic to crustaceans and dust mites.
• Farming it has a far smaller environmental impact than conventional livestock in feed conversion, emissions, and water and land use.

Skeleton type

Invertebrate - chitin exoskeleton (insect)

Habitat and environment

Flour and grain stores, nests and decaying wood

Size at birth

White bean-shaped egg the size of a speck of dust; the mature larva reaches 25-30 mm and about 185 mg

Sexual maturity

The adult emerges whitish, darkens within a week and begins to mate after one or two weeks of adult life

Gestation / incubation

The eggs hatch between 4 and 19 days; the larva goes through between 9 and 20 moults over 8 to 14 weeks and the pupa lasts 3 to 30 days depending on the temperature

Litter / clutch size

About 500 eggs per female over her lifetime, scattered loose in the flour or bran substrate

Sources consulted: Autoridad Europea de Seguridad Alimentaria (EFSA, 2021) · Janssen et al. (2017) · estudios de DIAAS in vitro (2023) · Enciclopedia de la vida, ficha Tenebrio molitor · ScienceDirect (Hughes 1989) · Science Advances, How colonial animals evolve · Wikipedia, Zooid · guias de cria · Ficha del genero Tenebrio (Rees 2004) · guias de cria de Tenebrio molitor · ficha de identificacion de Tenebrio molitor · NCBI PMC12052827 (dietas y crecimiento)