Elongated hindguts in desert-living dung beetles (Scarabaeidae : Scarabaeinae) feeding on dry dung pellets or plant litter

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dc.contributor.author Holter, Peter
dc.contributor.author Scholtz, Clarke H.
dc.date.accessioned 2013-10-02T08:15:27Z
dc.date.available 2013-10-02T08:15:27Z
dc.date.issued 2013-06
dc.description.abstract Most adult dung beetles (Scarabaeidae: Scarabaeinae) feed on fresh, wet dung of larger herbivorous or omnivorous mammals. As refractory plant fragments are selected out before ingestion, the food is presumed easily digestible. However, members of the desert-living scarabaeine genus Pachysoma (probably evolved from an ancestor closely related to the wet-dung feeding genus Scarabaeus) select dry dung pellets and/or plant litter. Thus, they ingest a much higher proportion of structural plant material, which nevertheless appears to be digested rather efficiently. This study investigates morphological modifications of the gut for this digestion in adults of eight Pachysoma species, both pellet and litter feeders. To ascertain hypothesized ancestral conditions, four fresh-dung feeding Scarabaeus species were also examined. The latter have the usual dung beetle gut consisting of a long, simple midgut, followed by an equally simple, much shorter hindgut of the same width. Lengths of midguts (M) and hindguts (H) divided by body length (B) for comparison between species of different size are: 4.9–6.3 (M/B) and 0.7–0.8 (H/B), which is normal for dung feeders. In Pachysoma, lengths are 6.3–6.5 (M/B) and 1.0–1.4 (H/B) in pellet feeders, and 4.4–5.0 (M/B) and 2.0–2.5 (H/B) for litter feeders. Hindguts are still morphologically undifferentiated and of midgut width, but clearly longer, particularly in litter feeders. Presumably, plant fragments in the food are digested, at least partly, in the hindgut. If so, the morphological adaptation is unusual: simple elongation rather than the expansion of part of the hindgut, as found in several other plant- or detritus-feeding scarabaeids. en
dc.description.librarian hb2013 en
dc.description.librarian ab2013
dc.description.uri http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/10.1002/(ISSN)1097-4687 en
dc.identifier.citation Holter, P & Scholtz, CH 2013, 'Elongated hindguts in desert-living dung beetles (Scarabaeidae : Scarabaeinae) feeding on dry dung pellets or plant litter', Journal of Morphology, vol. 274, no. 6, pp. 657-662. en
dc.identifier.issn 0362-2525 (print)
dc.identifier.issn 1097-4687 (online)
dc.identifier.other 10.1002/jmor.20123
dc.identifier.uri http://hdl.handle.net/2263/31879
dc.language.iso en en
dc.publisher Wiley en
dc.rights © 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. This is the pre-peer reviewed version of the following article : Journal of Morphology, vol. 274, no. 6, pp. 657-662, 2013. doi :10.1002/jmor.20123 which has been published in final form at http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/10.1002/(ISSN)1097-4687 en
dc.subject Digestion en
dc.subject Gut morphology en
dc.subject Plant litter feeding en
dc.subject Pachysoma en
dc.subject Scarabaeidae en
dc.subject.lcsh Dung beetles en
dc.subject.lcsh Plant litter en
dc.subject.lcsh Digestion en
dc.title Elongated hindguts in desert-living dung beetles (Scarabaeidae : Scarabaeinae) feeding on dry dung pellets or plant litter en
dc.type Postprint Article en


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