Beetles are a group of insects that form the order Coleoptera, in the superorder Endopterygota. Their front pair of wings are hardened into wing-cases, elytra, distinguishing them from most other insects. The Coleoptera, with about 400,000 species, is the largest of all orders, constituting almost 40% of described insects and 25% of all known animal life-forms; new species are discovered frequently. The largest of all families, the Curculionidae (weevils), with some 83,000 member species, belongs to this order. Found in almost every habitat except the sea and the polar regions, they interact with their ecosystems in several ways: beetles often feed on plants and fungi, break down animal and plant debris, and eat other invertebrates. Some species are serious agricultural pests, such as the Colorado potato beetle, while others such as Coccinellidae eat aphids, scale insects, thrips, and other plant-sucking insects that damage crops.
Ascomycota is a phylum of the kingdom Fungi that, together with the Basidiomycota, forms the subkingdom Dikarya. Its members are commonly known as the sac fungi or ascomycetes. It is the largest phylum of Fungi, with over 64,000 species. The defining feature of this fungal group is the "ascus", a microscopic sexual structure in which nonmotile spores, called ascospores, are formed. However, some species of the Ascomycota are asexual, meaning that they do not have a sexual cycle and thus do not form asci or ascospores. Familiar examples of sac fungi include morels, truffles, brewer's yeast and baker's yeast, dead man's fingers, and cup fungi. The fungal symbionts in the majority of lichens such as Cladonia belong to the Ascomycota.
A sporangium is an enclosure in which spores are formed. It can be composed of a single cell or can be multicellular. All plants, fungi, and many other lineages form sporangia at some point in their life cycle. Sporangia can produce spores by mitosis, but in nearly all land plants and many fungi, sporangia are the site of meiosis and produce genetically distinct haploid spores.
Ambrosia beetles are beetles of the weevil subfamilies Scolytinae and Platypodinae, which live in nutritional symbiosis with ambrosia fungi. The beetles excavate tunnels in dead or stressed trees in which they cultivate fungal gardens, their sole source of nutrition. After landing on a suitable tree, an ambrosia beetle excavates a tunnel in which it releases spores of its fungal symbiont. The fungus penetrates the plant's xylem tissue, extracts nutrients from it, and concentrates the nutrients on and near the surface of the beetle gallery. Ambrosia fungi are typically poor wood degraders, and instead utilize less demanding nutrients. The majority of ambrosia beetles colonize xylem of recently dead trees, but some attack stressed trees that are still alive, and a few species attack healthy trees. Species differ in their preference for different parts of trees, different stages of deterioration, and in the shape of their tunnels ("galleries"). However, the majority of ambrosia beetles are not specialized to any taxonomic group of hosts, unlike most phytophagous organisms including the closely related bark beetles. One species of ambrosia beetle, Austroplatypus incompertus exhibits eusociality, one of the few organisms outside of Hymenoptera and Isoptera to do so.
Bookworm is a general name for any insect that is said to bore through books.
A bark beetle is one of about 6,000 species in 247 genera of beetles in the subfamily Scolytinae. Previously, this was considered a distinct family (Scolytidae), but is now understood to be specialized clade of the "true weevil" family (Curculionidae). Although the term "bark beetle" refers to the fact that many species feed in the inner bark (phloem) layer of trees, the subfamily also has many species with other lifestyles, including some that bore into wood, feed in fruit and seeds, or tunnel into herbaceous plants. Well-known species are members of the type genus Scolytus, namely the European elm bark beetle S. multistriatus and the large elm bark beetle S. scolytus, which like the American elm bark beetle Hylurgopinus rufipes, transmit Dutch elm disease fungi (Ophiostoma). The mountain pine beetle Dendroctonus ponderosae, southern pine beetle Dendroctonus frontalis, and their near relatives are major pests of conifer forests in North America. A similarly aggressive species in Europe is the spruce ips Ips typographus. A tiny bark beetle, the coffee berry borer, Hypothenemus hampei is a major pest on coffee plantations around the world.
Frass refers loosely to the more or less solid excreta of insects, and to certain other related matter.
The Lymexylidae, also known as ship-timber beetles, are a family of wood-boring beetles. Lymexylidae belong to the suborder Polyphaga and are the sole member of the superfamily Lymexyloidea.
Saccharomycotina is a subdivision (subphylum) of the division (phylum) Ascomycota in the Kingdom Fungi. It comprises most of the ascomycete yeasts. The members of Saccharomycotina reproduce by budding and they do not produce ascocarps.
Xylophagy is a term used in ecology to describe the habits of an herbivorous animal whose diet consists primarily of wood. The word derives from Greek ξυλοφάγος (xulophagos) "eating wood", from ξύλον "wood" and φαγεῖν "to eat", an ancient Greek name for a kind of a worm-eating bird. Animals feeding only on dead wood are called sapro-xylophagous or saproxylic.
The term mycangium is used in biology for special structures on the body of an animal that are adapted for the transport of symbiotic fungi. This is seen in many xylophagous insects, which apparently derive much of their nutrition from the digestion of various fungi that are growing amidst the wood fibers. In some cases, as in ambrosia beetles, the fungi are the sole food, and the excavations in the wood are simply to make a suitable microenvironment for the fungus to grow. In other cases, wood tissue is the main food, and fungi weaken the defense response from the host plant.
Latridiidae is a family of tiny, little-known beetles commonly called minute brown scavenger beetles or fungus beetle. The number of described species currently stands at around 1050 in 29 genera but the number of species is undoubtedly much higher than this and increases each time a new estimate is made.
Ambrosia fungi are fungal symbionts of ambrosia beetles including the polyphagous and Kuroshio shot hole borers.
Pleuston are the organisms that live in the thin surface layer existing at the air-water interface of a body of water as their habitat. Examples include some cyanobacteria, some gastropods, the ferns Azolla and Salvinia and the seed plants Lemna, Wolffia, Pistia, Eichhornia crassipes and Hydrocharis. Some fungi and fungi-like protists may be also found.
Fungivory or mycophagy is the process of organisms consuming fungi. Many different organisms have been recorded to gain their energy from consuming fungi, including birds, mammals, insects, plants, amoebas, gastropods, nematodes, bacteria and other fungi. Some of these, which only eat fungi, are called fungivores whereas others eat fungi as only part of their diet, being omnivores.
The minute tree-fungus beetles, family Ciidae, are a sizeable group of beetles which inhabit Polyporales bracket fungi or coarse woody debris. Most numerous in warmer regions, they are nonetheless widespread and a considerable number of species occur as far polewards as Scandinavia for example.
A fungus is any member of the group of eukaryotic organisms that includes microorganisms such as yeasts and molds, as well as the more familiar mushrooms. These organisms are classified as a kingdom, which is separate from the other eukaryotic life kingdoms of plants and animals.
Blue stain fungi is a vague term including various fungi that cause dark staining in sapwood. The staining is most often blue, but could also be grey or black. Because the grouping is based solely on symptomatics, it is not a monophyletic grouping.
Ophiostoma breviusculum is a species of fungus in the family Ophiostomataceae, associated with bark beetles infesting larch in Japan. It belongs in the Ophiostoma piceae complex. It was also found in insect galleries of Larix kaempferi. The length of its perithecial necks and synnemata are shorter than in O. piceae. The synnemata also differ from the latter morphologically.
Platypus apicalis, known by its common name the New Zealand pinhole boring beetle, is a wood boring beetle endemic to New Zealand and found throughout the North and South Island in a range of environments.
