Yea! The beetles are back. Alas, music lovers, we're not talking about John, Paul, George and Ringo. We're talking about American Burying Beetles.
The 1-1/2 inch long insects, also known as carrion beetles (because that's what they eat), have been reintroduced to Ohio more than 25 years after they were last seen near Old Man's Cave.
Last spring, the Ohio Department of Natural Resources (ODNR) released about 900 of the bright orange and black bugs in southern Ohio. The beetles are native to Ohio and were common even in prehistoric times. But by 1989, they had landed on both the state and federal endangered lists.
Why did ODNR decide to reintroduce this particular bug? Did I mention they eat carrion? (Rather than digressing into a detailed and somewhat disgusting explanation, I'll paraphrase what I once heard from an entomologist: without insects, and beetles in particular, we'd be up to our necks in, um, stuff we don't want to be up to our necks in.)
So perhaps rather than questioning their value, we should ask, what did we do to drive them off in the first place?
How to Bug a Bug
There are several theories as to why the beetle began to disappear in Ohio, and it's likely that all of those theories are at least partially correct.
Most likely, they were compromised when development, especially artificial light, disturbed their habitat. The American Burying Beetle seems to prefer oak-hickory forests and thick grasslands-both of which were once abundant in Ohio. Also, as development rolled over the state, the beetle faced more competition for food. Other mammals, squeezed onto smaller and smaller bits of land, literally ate into their habitats.
How to Spot an American Burying Beetle
These beetles love darkness and, when they're not fighting over a piece of dead meat, they spend most of their time underground. So, if you see one, consider yourself lucky. (That is, as lucky as you can feel standing over a carcass, which is the most likely place to see one.)
We Otter be Proud
Many other critters-arguably cuter than beetles-have been successfully reintroduced in Ohio. Like the beetles, river otters faced increasingly less hospitable habitats in Ohio (and, let's face it, everywhere else), but, thanks to reintroduction efforts that began in 1986, otter populations were deemed healthy enough to remove the mammals from the state endangered species list in 2002. View the current Ohio Endangered Species list at http://www.dnr.state.oh.us/endangered/en...
(Photographs appear courtesy of the Ohio Department of Natural Resources; the talented photographers are Mike Williams and Tim Daniel.)
The 1-1/2 inch long insects, also known as carrion beetles (because that's what they eat), have been reintroduced to Ohio more than 25 years after they were last seen near Old Man's Cave.
Last spring, the Ohio Department of Natural Resources (ODNR) released about 900 of the bright orange and black bugs in southern Ohio. The beetles are native to Ohio and were common even in prehistoric times. But by 1989, they had landed on both the state and federal endangered lists.
Why did ODNR decide to reintroduce this particular bug? Did I mention they eat carrion? (Rather than digressing into a detailed and somewhat disgusting explanation, I'll paraphrase what I once heard from an entomologist: without insects, and beetles in particular, we'd be up to our necks in, um, stuff we don't want to be up to our necks in.)
So perhaps rather than questioning their value, we should ask, what did we do to drive them off in the first place?
How to Bug a Bug
There are several theories as to why the beetle began to disappear in Ohio, and it's likely that all of those theories are at least partially correct.
Most likely, they were compromised when development, especially artificial light, disturbed their habitat. The American Burying Beetle seems to prefer oak-hickory forests and thick grasslands-both of which were once abundant in Ohio. Also, as development rolled over the state, the beetle faced more competition for food. Other mammals, squeezed onto smaller and smaller bits of land, literally ate into their habitats.
How to Spot an American Burying Beetle
These beetles love darkness and, when they're not fighting over a piece of dead meat, they spend most of their time underground. So, if you see one, consider yourself lucky. (That is, as lucky as you can feel standing over a carcass, which is the most likely place to see one.)
We Otter be Proud
Many other critters-arguably cuter than beetles-have been successfully reintroduced in Ohio. Like the beetles, river otters faced increasingly less hospitable habitats in Ohio (and, let's face it, everywhere else), but, thanks to reintroduction efforts that began in 1986, otter populations were deemed healthy enough to remove the mammals from the state endangered species list in 2002. View the current Ohio Endangered Species list at http://www.dnr.state.oh.us/endangered/en...
(Photographs appear courtesy of the Ohio Department of Natural Resources; the talented photographers are Mike Williams and Tim Daniel.)
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