Exotic Manure Is Sure to Lure the Dung Connoisseur

[Staff]

Exotic Manure Is Sure to Lure the Dung Connoisseur
ScienceDaily
Apr. 11, 2012

Exotic manure is sure to lure the dung connoisseur
excerpt from above:

Although the preference of dung beetles for specific types and conditions of dung has been given substantial attention, little has been done to investigate their preference for dung from exotic mammals found on game farms or rewilding projects.

In "A Comparison of Dung Beetle (Coleoptera: Scarabaeidae) Attraction to Native and Exotic Mammal Dung," an article appearing in the latest edition of Environmental Entomology, Sean D. Whipple, a postdoctoral research associate at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, and W. Wyatt Hoback, a biology professor at the University of Nebraska at Kearney, used pitfall traps baited with various native and exotic herbivore, carnivore, and omnivore dung to evaluate dung beetle preference in the Great Plains of North America.

After spending two years capturing more than…

[suunto]

As a corollary to this, exotic species of dung beetles were introduced into Australia to deal with the problem of cattle manure. It seems that native species had evolved in conjunction with the marsupial fauna there, and turned up their noses, so to speak, at the dung of the domestic livestock brought there by European settlers. See Australian Dung Beetle Project - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia