Glasses are usually called the largest family of insects, which are at least a few tens of thousands. Well, some of the scientists indicate that this amount is no less than 50 thousand species. And this despite the fact that every year (think only!) all new varieties of these bugs are opened.
Description
The beetles are large (usually about 15 mm long) individuals, individual specimens of which can reach incredible five cm in length if not more.
The body of this beetle, as a rule, is elongated, with various variations of shades from dark black to brown, even sometimes with a metallized, or mother-of-pearl tint. The wings of beetles of these species are usually decorated with grooves and decorated with bright tiny dots.
With such sizes, it is not surprising that these insects do not fly very well (and some of them cannot do this at all!) mainly flights are used by them exclusively for resettlement.
The Zhuchny family is diverse in size from a couple of millimeters to ten centimeters and has a very diverse coloring.
The characteristic features of this family are strong legs, convex eyes and an unusual oral apparatus equipped with powerful stars.
Types of beetle
Mudders are of extraordinary size, including being one of the most numerous families, which includes many clans and species whose classification is quite difficult to produce.
Therefore, usually for the diagnosis and classification of the types of these insects, many signs are used from the color and shape of the structure, structure, and even chetotaxia (location of the bristles).
For example, the fauna of our country has 15 subfamilies of this family, which, in turn, are divided into 40 tribes, almost 200 genera and almost 2 thousand species and this is about 5% of the entire world fauna of these insects.
Such a huge number of species and insects are customary to be divided into three large groups:
- Phytophages
This small part is occupied by the destruction of cultivated plants and significantly complicates the conduct of the agricultural economy (in t.h. and private). Typically, in this case, we are talking about such a form as a bread beetle a resincolored beetle of large sizes about 1.5 cm. These beetles feed on cereal grains wheat, barley and many other cultivated plants.
Bread beetle
- Entomophages
This is a useful beetle, parttime a formidable predator. It benefits, eating many harmful insects causing destruction to agriculture.
- Mixophages (for example, asking for beetle).
Beetles included in this group eat mainly plant foods, but sometimes they are happy to consume animal food, when the diet is still significantly limited.
Modeliers form systems include a separate classification due to the type of nutrition, as well as depending on the habitat and even the type of movement.
Asshony beetle
Other examples of the beetles we wrote about earlier
Caucasian beetle
Hungarian beetle
Goebler beetle
Red Book
Mudders are one of the many families (if not the largest), the number of species of which ranges from 50 thousand species that are replenished annually. And some of them are listed in the Red Book such as, for example, the beetle of the Crimean. Its number is directly related to the number of precipitation it is they who regulate the volume of the feed base of this insect, which includes ground mollusks. Its number is reduced due to the reduction of soil areas, which are virgin, as well as an increase in the use of pesticides.
The beetle of the Crimean
Food
Mudders (in their vast majority) are predators whose diet is a variety of types of invertebrates. And in the evening, they begin to hunt on caterpillars and worms, without disdaining slugs and even snails. Possessing powerful jaws, beetlers easily open chitin shells and even shells.
At the same time, most beetles are characterized by extracurricular digestion: in this case, gastric juice is affected by the victim, which is released using a special zero apparatus of the beetle. But the beetle herself does not have toxic qualities.
Larvae feed in the same way as adults, but sometimes they differ in a special specialization for example, they feed on rainworms, or parasitize on other insects.
Some elders can be frog hunters.
Development and reproduction
In the development of this beetle, it is customary to distinguish four types of rhythm:
Usually the development of the beetle takes about about a year. The beetle begins to multiply upon reaching this age, when it reaches the stage of the Imago.
The beetle is a representative of the hardwinged their development cycle relates to complete transformation, which includes the passage of four stages:
The marriage period of the beetles falls on a very different time of the year and after mating, the female lays eggs. They are usually small in size and are a cylinder with rounded ends with a thin shell of a whitish shade, through which a larva is already shining through in the last stages.
Typically, in laying about two hundred eggs and their development period is about a month, and then larvae live in the upper layers of the soil, consuming cereal leaves.
Larva of the bread beetles
In the spring, the larva pupates (usually this also takes about a month), and is already turning into a fullfledged insect.
The best means of protection against such insects is to reduce the timing of harvesting along with the use of thorough cleaning of the fields from straw and timely stubeen’s radiation. It will not be superfluous and plowing.
The value of the elder in nature
The overwhelming number of beetles belongs to Poliphagus predators, which, combined with a high number, largely determines their practical significance. Due to the lack of decisive dependence on the density of the pest, the Gums can stop the increase in the number of the pest even before the latter reaches the threshold of harmfulness. The difficulty of breeding will probably never allow the use of the method of flooding issues, the method of seasonal colonization, etc., But the use of sparing plant protection products, a wellthoughtout arrangement of various crops, proper crop rotation can increase the effectiveness of these entomophages within the framework of an intensively developed strategy for rational land use.
The benefits and harms
Mudders do not differ in an unambiguous attitude some of them are harmful and even destructive for a large number of cultivated plants in connection with which serious companies are undergoing to destroy them.
Some of the types of beetles are able to bring even the benefits of rural lands those that feed on pests, including larvae and caterpillars. For example, a garden beetle is able to exterminate about three hundred insects harm in one season. The larvae differ exactly the same appetite.
Garden Wogland
The beetle does not make danger to people but many of them are pests in relation to crops (the same bread beetle). Grain beetles are able to gnaw grain from the spike, and the rest is simply spoiled. Larvae bring irreparable damage to winter and spring crops. In some cases, they are even able to penetrate the dwellings of people, eating products.
The lifestyle is eternal
It is customary to distribute the types of beetles on daytime insects and beetles leading a night lifestyle and sometimes the border between these species is quite conditional. Most likely, this indicator is associated with the criteria of the activity of the elders and this is not insolation, but the indicator of humidity: that is why many gods show activity in the daytime in the spring, when the level of moisture in the air is quite high.
Mudders in our country overwhelming the majority lead a ground lifestyle, preferring autumn leaf opad.
But it is necessary to take into account the high environmental plasticity of these insects: they are able to live on plants (epiphytic), on soil, about water, and even parasitize on others.
The beetlers are distinguished by a powerful sickleshaped apparatus of the jaws and quite strong and developed legs all this is especially adapted for quick and efficient movement and hunting, because the beetle should exceed their prey in speed indicators. If necessary, some of these insects are able to move around the trees.
The jaw apparatus of the insect is quite able to break the shell of almost any insect, but the beetles prefer to consume snails and slugs in food there is no need to run for such prey. It is interesting that in one night the insect covers the distance of at least a few kilometers. The shape of the jaws of the insect allows you to hold the victim and then inject the poisonous liquid into the body of the insect it dissolves the production of prey.
Usually the beetles are not very active during the day, hiding in the grass or behind stones, and even under the bark.
During the season, a family of insects is quite capable of mastering the destruction of several thousand a variety of pests both crawling and moving running.
The female usually lays about two hundred eggs-and a month or two goes to the development of a full-fledged individual from larva to doll and imago. Wintering usually takes place in the soil: Military men have been living for a dozen years, unlike many other species.
It’s a shame that useful beetles have been actively reduced recently, due to the influence of pesticides, and even because of collectors and tourists, because the insect is really very impressive.
Natural enemies
In a natural environment, the beetles are forced to fight several types of enemies:
In the body of the beetle (intestines, the oral apparatus, wings), many forms of organisms live, which can cause a variety of problems from parasitic castration to the death of the beetle.
Such parasites include nematodes, ticks: for example, on one beetle there can be several types of various parasites that the most diverse parts of the beetle body are beloved. The beetlers represent the special charm of larvae for the Os-residents and flies, which thus dedicated the offspring.
This is the most important factor that helps regulate the number of this type of insect.
Hedgehog is a natural enemy of the beetle
Distribution of beetles
Mudders are a large form that is common throughout the surface of the Earth: these insects cannot be found only in Antarctica. These beetles are perfectly adapted to the conditions of both a moderate climate and moist tropics and even highlands. Representatives of this family can be found in a wide variety of climatic zones in forests, and in the steppes, and in deserts. They are found in cold, and in moderately, and in tropical climate. But still, the vast majority of species of this family still prefer to live in a wet climate and biopes with not very critical temperature indicators.
