Red flour beetle
Red brown rice flour beetle ( Tribolium castaneum )
The Red-brown rice flour beetle ( Tribolium castaneum ) is a beetle of the family of darkling beetles ( Tenebrionidae ).
- 3.1 pest
Features
The beetles are colored bright red to brown and reach a body length of three to four millimeters. The body is elongated narrow head and pronotum are slightly darker than the elytra. The sensor end in a tripartite lobe. The elytra are provided with longitudinal ridges, between which there is one row of fine dots.
The eggs are covered with a sticky secretion, so that they are the breeding substrate and difficult to detect adhere well.
The larvae are caterpillar- like, yellowish in color and reach a length of up to eight millimeters. The head capsule is dark colored. The larval body has three pairs of walking legs and on the 9th abdominal segment two Nachschieber.
The pupae are yellowish to brownish colored and three to four millimeters long. They lie freely in the breeding substrate.
Similar Species
A similar kind, ( Tribolium confusum = American flour beetles), originally from Africa, Tribolium castaneum looks confusingly similar. It is now to be found (for example northern states of the USA) in cooler climates around the world. However, a distinctive feature is the clearly distinct tripartite Endkeule probes from Tribolium castaneum. In Tribolium confusum the members take to the tip gradually increase in size without forming a club. Other distinguishing features: In T.confusum above the eyes a stepped projecting edge, pronotum at T.castaneum in the middle at the widest, at T.confusum in the front third.
Occurrence
Tribolium castaneum was originally native to the Indo- Australian fauna, where he lives under tree bark. Meanwhile, the kind found virtually everywhere in the temperate zones as well as in centrally heated rooms.
Way of life
The beetles can be up to three years old, during which time a female lays several eggs a day, a total of 1,000 units. The ideal conditions for development are 32-37 ° C and 70 percent humidity, the cycle from egg to imago is passed through within 27-35 days.
Pest
Tribolium castaneum is one of the stored product pests, under optimal conditions of life, it can quickly lead to high population densities and heavy damage to stored food. Can be infected cereals and their products, as well as peas, beans, seeds, raisins, cocoa, sunflower seeds, peanuts, etc. According to Central Europe, the kind often passes through food imports and is mainly found in large mills, then go from where the beetle in the retail industry. To combat the beetle destruction of the infested food is recommended. Newly acquired products can be stored for 24 hours in the freezer, within this period all development stages are killed. Further, various contact insecticides and toxic-free products based on silica commercially. The latter destroy the cuticle, resulting in desiccation of the beetle.
Model system in science
Tribolium castaneum is going to develop into an important genetic model system. He is beginning March 24, 2008, the first beetle, whose genome has been sequenced; its genome contains 16,000 genes (compared to the human has about 32,000 genes), of which a few hundred that were not found in Drosophila. The function of genes can be turned off in the flour beetle very efficiently by systemic RNA interference ( RNAi). Finally, the misexpression of genes is possible and further transgenic methods are established. The scientists hope to gain from the model system mealworm insights into embryonic development, metamorphosis, evolution of body diversity and the control of pests.
Also plays an important role as an example of the biological use of Chaos theory. In particular, his cannibalism leads to a non-linear population dynamics with diverse properties that are the subject of numerous investigations.