%0 Journal Article
%T Carcass Fungistasis of the Burying Beetle Nicrophorus nepalensis Hope (Coleoptera: Silphidae)
%A Wenbe Hwang
%A Hsiu-Mei Lin
%J Psyche
%D 2013
%I Hindawi Publishing Corporation
%R 10.1155/2013/162964
%X Our study investigated the fungistatic effects of the anal secretions of Nicrophorus nepalensis Hope on mouse carcasses. The diversity of fungi on carcasses was investigated in five different experimental conditions that corresponded to stages of the burial process. The inhibition of fungal growth on carcasses that were treated by mature beetles before burial was lost when identically treated carcasses were washed with distilled water. Compared with control carcasses, carcasses that were prepared, buried, and subsequently guarded by mature breeding pairs of beetles exhibited the greatest inhibition of fungal growth. No significant difference in fungistasis was observed between the 3.5£¿g and the 18 to 22£¿g guarded carcasses. We used the growth of the predominant species of fungi on the control carcasses, Trichoderma sp., as a biological indicator to examine differences in the fungistatic efficiency of anal secretions between sexually mature and immature adults and between genders. The anal secretions of sexually mature beetles inhibited the growth of Trichoderma sp., whereas the secretions of immature beetles did not. The secretions of sexually mature females displayed significantly greater inhibition of the growth of Trichoderma sp. than those of sexually mature males, possibly reflecting a division of labor in burying beetle reproduction. 1. Introduction Burying beetles (Nicrophorus spp.) use small vertebrate carcasses as food for their larval broods by depositing their eggs around a buried carcass [1, 2]. Carcasses are nutritious yet rare resources [3, 4]. During the lifetime of a beetle, it may find only one carcass that is suitable for reproduction [5]. Competition for carcasses is intense [6¨C8], and burying beetles of the same or different species may fight to maintain occupancy of the carcass [1, 9¨C11]. Bacterial and fungal decomposers destroy carcasses, and scavenging animals have evolved behavioral and physiological counterstrategies to maintain food sources [12]. Before burying a carcass, the burying beetles remove the fur or feathers from the carcass, compact the carcass by rolling it repeatedly, and smear its surface with their anal secretions [1]. Carcasses used by beetles typically vary in size from 1 to 75£¿g [9, 10, 13] and are encountered in variable states of decay. Burying beetles exhibit adaptive strategies that enable them to manage the carrion resources in such diverse conditions, such as adjusting the number of eggs laid [13, 14] and practicing infanticide [15, 16], with the number of surviving larvae positively correlated with
%U http://www.hindawi.com/journals/psyche/2013/162964/