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Flight capabilities and feeding habits of silphine beetles: are flightless species really “carrion beetles”?

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Ecological Research

Abstract

We determined the flight capabilities and feeding habits of adults of nine silphine beetle species and illustrated their relationship. We examined the silphine beetles for the presence or absence of flight muscles and estimated their feeding habits by comparing the carbon and nitrogen stable isotope ratios for them with those of necrophagous nicrophorine species and carnivorous carabine species. Three species (Silpha longicornis, S. perforata and Phosphuga atrata) completely lacked individuals with flight muscles, and one species (Eusilpha japonica) showed flight muscle dimorphism. Stable isotope analysis suggested that these species were carnivores, mainly feeding on soil invertebrates. Most flight species showed higher isotopic ratios than the flightless species. Some of them have isotopic ratios close to those of the nicrophorine species, suggesting that these species mainly feed on vertebrate carcasses. Flightless silphine species would have limited ability to search for patchy and unpredictable carcass resources. Further studies are necessary to understand the adaptive evolution of flight capability and the feeding habits in this group.

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Acknowledgments

We are grateful to Motohiko Kondo and Yuko Matsushita for analyzing some samples and helping to make samples, and to Seiichi Moriya for teaching us flight mill analysis. We would like to thank Takuya Fukuzawa, Ryôsuke Ishikawa, Noriko Iwai, Masahiro Nagano, Koji Sasakawa, Masahiko Tanahashi, Masayuki Ujiie and Hanae Yamashita for supplying us with some samples and for providing some advice about field collection, and to some of the members of the Laboratory of Silviculture, University of Tokyo, for lending us the bead cell disrupter.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Laboratory of Forest Zoology, Graduate School of Agricultural and Life Sciences, The University of Tokyo, 1-1-1 Yayoi, Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo, 113-8657, Japan

    Hiroshi Ikeda, Kohei Kubota & Takashi Kagaya

  2. Department of Soil and Water Conservation, Forestry and Forest Products Research Institute, Ibaraki, Japan

    Toshio Abe

Authors
  1. Hiroshi Ikeda
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  2. Kohei Kubota
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  3. Takashi Kagaya
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  4. Toshio Abe
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Correspondence to Hiroshi Ikeda.

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Ikeda, H., Kubota, K., Kagaya, T. et al. Flight capabilities and feeding habits of silphine beetles: are flightless species really “carrion beetles”?. Ecol Res 22, 237–241 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11284-006-0012-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11284-006-0012-1

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