What's this Bug?

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What's going on with these bugs? (lemmy.world)

submitted 4 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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It's a bit hard to make out in the photo, but there the center is a larger black insect being swarmed by dozens of small light brown ones. The larger one looks like some sort of beetle. What are the smaller ones?

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 months ago (1 children)

So they're not actually beetle parasites but just use them as transportation? That's cool!

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (1 children)

I somehow forgot to include a sentence from the properties section:

Some of the mites live ectoparasitically on beetles and are also phoretic here, as they utilize the transport capacity of their host.

I think this implies they also drink the 'blood' of the beetle while being transported to another place.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 months ago

Thanks. More creepy bug stuff I didn't know about. The beetle seemed inhibited if not incapacitated by them. It looked to me like a swarming attack, but it could have just been that there were so many that it couldn't easily move.