Due to a late summer heat wave, several large wildfires are burning across the western US, forcing thousands of people to flee their homes and turning skies an ominous orange in parts of Southern California.
This is definitely bad for everyone. Except for melanophila beetles.
These insects, which are about the size of pumpkin seeds, are pyrophilous – meaning, they love fire. They actually depend on it for their reproduction. When most animals flee the wildfire, these insects fly toward the fire, mate in the embers, and lay eggs.
Those eggs later hatch into worm-like larvae that feast on recently burned wood.
A burning orgy may sound like a terrifying idea, but it brings several benefits to these bugs. When forests are on fire, there aren’t as many insect-eating predators around, which may be one reason the behavior evolved, scientists say.
As our cars and power plants continue to heat the planet, wildfire seasons will only get longer and more intense. Such animal adaptations offer some useful insights: they remind us that climate change will not simply be the end for all animals. Some species are hot for heat.
How do fireflies find flames?
Although these beetles don’t look that extraordinary, they have an impressive anatomy. Like home security systems and night-vision goggles, they have infrared sensors on their bodies. These sensors – known as sensory pit organs – detect infrared radiation, which is a proxy for heat. Located on the bottom of the insect, these holes direct them to the fire.
Using sensors on their antennae, these beetles may also be Be able to detect smoke. During football games at the University of California, Berkeley in the 1940s, the fans’ lit tobacco smoke would regularly attract a swarm of melanophila beetles that would enrage the fans, author Jim Agee says in his book Fire ecology of Pacific Northwest forests. Because cigarettes don’t emit much heat, researchers suspect it was the smoke that drew them in.
Using these sensory systems, fire beetles can detect flames from great distances. A study in 2012, based on modeling, suggested that these fire bugs could be “aware” from about 80 miles away, or the distance between New York City and Philadelphia. So often where you find fire, you find fire bugs.
Firefighters know this fact all too well.
“Wildland firefighters hate these insects,” Lynn Kimsey, an entomologist at the University of California, Davis and director of the Bohart Museum of Entomology, told me last year. “When you’re working on fire lines, especially around trees that are burning, the beetles will come in large numbers and they’ll get into your vote and bite.”
The sting feels a bit like a bee sting, and sometimes like a fire extinguisher Wear a bee screen to protect themselves.
Why do these insects seek scorched earth?
When male insects arrive at a forest fire, they have one thing in mind: sex. Insects are often “burnt or near burning wood or hot ashes” on a tree. The researchers explainedAnd when they find a female, “they try to copulate vigorously” (in the literal heat of the moment). The females then lay their eggs under the bark of the burnt tree.
Why choose freshly burned forest?
The simplest explanation is that their descendants, the beetle larvae, can Just continue On burnt tree wood. When a tree burns, it has a weak or non-existent defense system, which allows insects to easily carry insects through the wood under the bark. “The beetles can get in there and feed freely,” Kimsey said.
What’s more, most insects avoid recently burned areas, so when baby fire beetles emerge, they have less competition for food — they’ve got a wooden buffet to themselves. These areas usually have fewer insect predators such as birds. (However, in a remarkable example of evolution, some species, such as the black-backed woodpecker, have evolved to eat the larvae of fire-related insects.)
Another possible reason why they chase fires is that beetle larvae can develop quickly in freshly burned areas. Heat increases the rate of growth, Like a cozy incubator, some evidence advises That means insects can produce more babies in less time.
A rare climate change winner?
Rising temperatures associated with climate change are already a problem for many ecosystems and species. Warming fuels coral-killing heat waves and hurricanes, shrinks some animals and incapacitates others, and generally makes much of the planet less suitable for life.
At least in the short term, fire beetles (and some beetle pests) may be able to defy these negative trends. Climate change is making wildfires more widespread and extreme, and scientists suspect that beetles can only breed with fire.
For now, that’s just speculation, Kimsey said. “Without fire we have no idea what they’re doing,” he said.
What is clear is that climate change will create some winners as well as some losers. This beetle species may be one of them. A world on fire can be a world full of hornet beetles.
