| Necrobia ruficollis | |
|---|---|
 | |
Scientific classification  | |
| Kingdom: | Animalia |
| Phylum: | Arthropoda |
| Class: | Insecta |
| Order: | Coleoptera |
| Family: | Cleridae |
| Genus: | Necrobia |
| Species: | N. ruficollis |
| Binomial name | |
| Necrobia ruficollis (Fabricius, 1775) | |
Necrobia ruficollis, the ham beetle, [1] red-shouldered ham beetle, or red-necked bacon beetle, [2] is a mostly carnivorous beetle in the family Cleridae with a cosmopolitan distribution. [1]
Necrobia ruficollis is 4.0–6.5 mm (0.16–0.26 in) long, and is mostly a metallic black or dark blue colour. Its thorax and legs and the bases of the elytra are reddish brown. [2]
It feeds on dead animals, including dried and smoked meats and animal skins, as well as on cheese. It is frequently found in cadavers in the later stages of decomposition, [1] and is thus useful in forensic entomology.
French zoologist Pierre André Latreille was imprisoned in 1793 under threat of execution, after failing to swear allegiance to the state following the Civil Constitution of the Clergy. [3] When the prison's doctor inspected the prisoners, he was surprised to find Latreille scrutinising a beetle on the dungeon floor. [4] When Latreille explained that it was a rare insect, having identified it as Necrobia ruficollis, the physician was impressed and sent the insect to a 15-year-old local naturalist, Jean Baptiste Bory de Saint-Vincent. Bory de St.-Vincent knew Latreille's work, and managed to obtain the release of Latreille and one of his cellmates. [4] All the other inmates were dead within one month. [4]
Thysanura is the now deprecated name of what was, for over a century, recognised as an order in the class Insecta. The two constituent groups within the former order, the Archaeognatha and the Zygentoma, share several characteristics, such as of having three long caudal filaments, the lateral ones being the cerci, while the one between (telson) is a medial cerciform appendage, specifically an epiproct. They are also both wingless, and have bodies covered with fine scales, rather like the scales of the practically unrelated Lepidoptera. In the late 20th century, it was recognized that the two suborders were not sister taxa, therefore Thysanura was paraphyletic, and the two suborders were each raised to the status of an independent monophyletic order, with Archaeognatha sister taxon to the Dicondylia, including the Zygentoma.
Johan Christian Fabricius was a Danish zoologist, specialising in "Insecta", which at that time included all arthropods: insects, arachnids, crustaceans and others. He was a student of Carl Linnaeus, and is considered one of the most important entomologists of the 18th century, having named nearly 10,000 species of animals, and established the basis for the modern insect classification.
Pierre André Latreille was a French zoologist, specialising in arthropods. Having trained as a Roman Catholic priest before the French Revolution, Latreille was imprisoned, and only regained his freedom after recognising a rare beetle species he found in the prison, Necrobia ruficollis.
Jean Victor Audouin, sometimes Victor Audouin, was a French naturalist, an entomologist, herpetologist, ornithologist, and malacologist.
Sir William Jardine, 7th Baronet of Applegarth FRS FRSE FLS FSA was a Scottish naturalist. He is known for his editing of a long series of natural history books, The Naturalist's Library.
In biology, the imago is the last stage an insect attains during its metamorphosis, its process of growth and development; it is also called the imaginal stage, the stage in which the insect attains maturity. It follows the final ecdysis of the immature instars.
Édouard Ménétries was a French entomologist, zoologist, and herpetologist. He is best known as the founder of the Russian Entomological Society.
Louis Augustin Guillaume Bosc was a French botanist, invertebrate zoologist, and entomologist.
André Marie Constant Duméril was a French zoologist. He was professor of anatomy at the Muséum national d'histoire naturelle from 1801 to 1812, when he became professor of herpetology and ichthyology. His son Auguste Duméril was also a zoologist.
The pollen basket or corbicula is part of the tibia on the hind legs of certain species of bees. They use the structure in harvesting pollen and carrying it to the nest or hive. Other species of bees have scopae instead.
Jean-Baptiste Geneviève Marcellin Bory de Saint-Vincent was a French naturalist, officer and politician. He was born on 6 July 1778 in Agen (Lot-et-Garonne) and died on 22 December 1846 in Paris. Biologist and geographer, he was particularly interested in volcanology, systematics and botany. The standard author abbreviation Bory is used to indicate this person as the author when citing a botanical name.
Théodore Lacordaire or Jean Théodore Lacordaire was a Belgian entomologist of French extraction.
Vincent Gaston Dethier was an American physiologist and entomologist. Considered a leading expert in his field, he was a pioneer in the study of insect-plant interactions and wrote over 170 academic papers and 15 science books. From 1975 until his death, he was the Gilbert L. Woodside Professor of Zoology at the University of Massachusetts Amherst where he was the founding director of its Neuroscience and Behavior Program and chaired the Chancellor's Commission on Civility. Dethier also wrote natural history books for non-specialists, as well as short stories, essays and children's books.
George Samouelle was a curator in the British Museum of "no real scientific aptitude".
The family Oedemeridae is a cosmopolitan group of beetles commonly known as false blister beetles, though some recent authors have coined the name pollen-feeding beetles. There are some 100 genera and 1,500 species in the family, mostly associated with rotting wood as larvae, though adults are quite common on flowers. The family was erected by Pierre André Latreille in 1810.
Scarabaeus sacer, common name sacred scarab, is the type species of dung beetles in its genus and the family Scarabaeidae.
The Reverend Frederick Valentine Melsheimer was a Lutheran clergyman and early American entomologist, called the "Father of American Entomology" by successor Thomas Say. He was the author of the first major entomological work in the United States: A Catalogue of Insects of Pennsylvania (1806), a sixty-page work that describes 1,363 species of beetles.
Necrobia rufipes, the red-legged ham beetle, is a species of predatory beetle, in the family Cleridae, with a cosmopolitan distribution, first described by Charles De Geer in 1775.
Asclera is a genus of false blister beetles in the family Oedemeridae. There are about six described species in Asclera.