Telephone-pole beetle

The telephone-pole beetle (Micromalthus debilis) is a beetle native to the eastern United States, and the only living representative of the otherwise extinct family Micromalthidae (i.e., a "living fossil").

Telephone-pole beetle
Temporal range: Miocene–Present
Scientific classification
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Arthropoda
Class: Insecta
Order: Coleoptera
Suborder: Archostemata
Family: Micromalthidae
Genus: Micromalthus
Species:
M. debilis
Binomial name
Micromalthus debilis
LeConte, 1878

Taxonomy

Classification of M. debilis was historically controversial and unsettled. The species, first reported by John Lawrence LeConte in 1878, was long considered one of the Polyphaga, and placed in the Lymexylidae or Telegeusidae, or as a family within the Cantharoidea. However, characteristics of larvae, wings, and male genitalia show that it is in the suborder Archostemata, where it has been placed since 1999.[1]

Morphology

The beetle is elongated, ranging from 1.5 to 2.5 mm (0.059 to 0.098 in) in length, and a dark brown to blackish color, with brownish-yellow legs and antennae. The head is larger than the thorax, with large eyes protruding from either side. The larvae are wood-borers that feed on moist and decaying chestnut and oak logs. They have also been reported as causing damage to buildings and poles (hence the name). The life cycle is unusual in that the cerambycoid stage of the larva gives birth via parthenogenesis to caraboid larvae, or more rarely, develops into an adult female. The adults of both genders are sterile, and are likely vestigial remnants of a time when the lifecycle involved sexual reproduction.[2]

Evolutionary history

Fossils of the genus are known from the Miocene aged Dominican amber (adults and larvae, which were found to not be distinguishable from the living species[3]) and Mexican amber (larvae), the upper Eocene Rovno amber of Ukraine (Micromalthus priabonicus),[4] the early Eocene (Ypresian) aged Oise amber of France (Micromalthus eocenicus)[5] The oldest record of the family is Archaeomalthus from the Upper Permian of Russia, which is morphologically similar in many respects to Micromalthus.[6]

Status

Reports of the species are infrequent and it is unknown whether they are rare, or common and unrecognized. A recent study by Bertone et al. (2016)[7] found telephone-pole beetles in a survey of the indoor arthropod fauna in 50 houses located in and around Raleigh, North Carolina.[8] A recent survey found that the species had spread to every continent except Australia, with finds in South Africa, Hong Kong, Belize,[9] Cuba, Brazil, Japan, Hawaii, Italy and Austria, the dispersal is likely connected to the timber trade.[10]

References
  1. Ross H. Arnett, Jr. and Michael C. Thomas, American Beetles (CRC Press, 2001), chap. 2
  2. Perotti, M. Alejandra; Young, Daniel K.; Braig, Henk R. (June 2016). "The ghost sex-life of the paedogenetic beetle Micromalthus debilis". Scientific Reports. 6 (1): 27364. Bibcode:2016NatSR...627364P. doi:10.1038/srep27364. ISSN 2045-2322. PMC 4895236. PMID 27270667.
  3. Hörnschemeyer, Thomas; Wedmann, Sonja; Poinar, George (February 2010). "How long can insect species exist? Evidence from extant and fossil Micromalthus beetles (Insecta: Coleoptera): SPECIES LONGEVITY IN MICROMALTHUS (COLEOPTERA)". Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society. 158 (2): 300–311. doi:10.1111/j.1096-3642.2009.00549.x.
  4. Perkovsky, E. E. (May 2016). "A new species of Micromalthidae (Coleoptera) from the Rovno amber: 1. Adult morphology". Paleontological Journal. 50 (3): 293–296. doi:10.1134/S0031030116030047. ISSN 0031-0301. S2CID 89095000.
  5. Kirejtshuk, Alexander G.; Nel, André; Collomb, François-Marie (January 2010). "New Archostemata (Insecta: Coleoptera) from the French Paleocene and Early Eocene, with a note on the composition of the suborder". Annales de la Société Entomologique de France. N.S. 46 (1–2): 216–227. doi:10.1080/00379271.2010.10697661. ISSN 0037-9271. S2CID 55400656.
  6. Yan, Evgeny Viktorovich; Beutel, Rolf Georg; Lawrence, John Francis; Yavorskaya, Margarita Igorevna; Hörnschemeyer, Thomas; Pohl, Hans; Vassilenko, Dmitry Vladimirovich; Bashkuev, Alexey Semenovich; Ponomarenko, Alexander Georgievich (2020-09-13). "Archaeomalthus -(Coleoptera, Archostemata) a 'ghost adult' of Micromalthidae from Upper Permian deposits of Siberia?". Historical Biology. 32 (8): 1019–1027. doi:10.1080/08912963.2018.1561672. ISSN 0891-2963. S2CID 91721262.
  7. Bertone, MA; Leong, M; Bayless, KM; Malow, TL; Dunn, RR; Trautwein, MD (19 January 2016). "Arthropods of the great indoors: characterizing diversity inside urban and suburban homes". PeerJ. 4: e1582. doi:10.7717/peerj.1582. PMC 4727974. PMID 26819844.
  8. Milman, Oliver (19 January 2016). "Hundreds of tiny spiders, lice and more crawling through US homes, study says". The Guardian. Retrieved 19 January 2016. Matthew Bertone, an entomologist at North Carolina State University, said he was amazed at the variety of species found in what he stressed were 'clean and normal' homes in Raleigh, North Carolina. 'We were pretty surprised with what we found, such as the smallest wasp in the world, which is just 1mm long,' he said. 'I saw a lot of things in homes that I had never seen in the wild before, things we've previously tried to trap. There is a weird species of beetle, called telephone pole beetles, where the babies can produce babies. And tiny crickets called ant-loving ants because they are found near ant nests. I’ve never seen one of those before.'
  9. Philips, T. Keith (2001). "A Record of Micromalthus debilis (Coleoptera: Micromalthidae) from Central America and a Discussion of Its Distribution". The Florida Entomologist. 84 (1): 159. doi:10.2307/3496680. ISSN 0015-4040.
  10. Ruzzier, Enrico; Colla, Andrea (2019-06-26). "Micromalthus debilis LeConte, 1878 (Coleoptera: Micromalthidae), an American wood-boring beetle new to Italy". Zootaxa. 4623 (3): 589–594. doi:10.11646/zootaxa.4623.3.12. ISSN 1175-5334. PMID 31716256.
This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.