Transcript:

Today on Animal Fact Files we’re talking about net-winged beetles. These beetles somewhat look like fireflies, but they aren’t known to produce any kind of glow. Any easy way to distinguish them is to take a close look at their wing covers. The wing covers in beetles are called elytra, a term any of you who play Minecraft might be familiar with. Somehow this channel always comes back to gaming in some way. The elytra on net winged beetles look just as their common name would describe, like nets. And though many net winged beetles, though not all, which we’ll be getting to in just a bit, come equipped with fancy wing covers, they’re not exactly the best fliers.

Net winged beetled are most commonly found hanging out on vegetation. These beetles are considered a cosmopolitan group of which there are currently more than 4,000 described species - and likely more to be described. They are most abundant in tropical climate areas, but they even venture into temperate and boreal landscapes. Net winged beetles have a propensity for drying out if their environments aren’t damp enough, so they do require some amount of moisture in their habitats, but they can be found from the forest floor to the forest canopy and everywhere in between.

Larval forms of net winged beetles are most often associated with the forest floor. Here they may hang out in rotting logs, under loss bark, or in soil and leaf litter. Net winged beetle larvae are known to eat slime molds, funguses, and plant juices, though there are reports they may consume animal material, as well. Adult net winged beetles eat plant nectar and honeydew which is a sugary substance secreted by other arthropods such as aphids and scale insects.

Net winged beetles themselves are likely pretty safe from persecution of predators for two reasons. One: they come in bright warning colors. Known as aposematic coloration, these hues of yellow, orange, and red are a signal to predators of the number two reason net winged beetles likely aren’t frequently consumed by predators. Like the fireflies we’ve previously discussed, net winged beetles taste awful. Sure, they may be taken by a curious shrew, spider, or bird - but that same predator isn’t likely to take another bite out of these bugs once they’ve had that bad acidic taste in their mouth just one time. Both the larvae and the adults give off these warning colors and bad taste, though sometimes it can be difficult to tell the difference between the two life stages.

This video was originally inspired by Marco Chu’s suggestion of the trilobite beetle. The trilobite beetle is a type of net winged beetle who doesn’t always end up with wings! Female trilobite beetles specifically maintain the external form of their larvae so, kind of like an axolotl, they don’t lose their larval stage looks - though it’s only the female trilobite beetles who maintain that youthful physique. The boys still end up looking like most other net winged beetle males.

The stage between the larval and adult stage is called the pupal stage. For many net-winged beetle species, as the larvae enter their final instar, or their final molt, they gather in huge groups, sometimes numbering in the hundreds. This means the pupae will end up all together in a mass as they develop into adults.

For more facts on net winged beetles, check out the links in the description. Give a thumbs up if you learned something new today, and thank you for watching Animal Fact Files.