Julie added: "We were excited to find our first thick-legged
flower beetle on site, feeding in our meadow border.
Now you may ask why a backpack for a flower beetle? It surely doesn't need one to carry textbooks to school or store healthy snacks as it flies to its favorite flower.
Controlling the flight of the flower beetle is relatively simple.
PEN PAL: Curator Paul Pearce peers at an African
flower beetle as he conducts his head count Picture: HELEN ATKINSON
Besides honey bees that are commonly known to many, other pollinators are bumblebees, pollen wasps, hoverflies, bee flies and
flower beetles.
Hirotaka Sato and his colleagues at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore inserted electrodes into
flower beetles (Mecynorrhina torquata) to stimulate specific leg muscle groups.
Experts attached tiny radio receiver backpacks and electrodes to giant
flower beetles.
Engineers attached electrodes and tiny backpacks to 3in-long giant
flower beetles.
Megachile spp., Diadasia spp., Lithurge echinocacti, Ashmeadiella opuntiae, Svastra duplocincta) are more effective pollinators than other common floral visitors such as ants,
flower beetles (Carphophilus spp., Acmaeodera spp.), smaller bees (Perdita/Macrotera spp., Lassioglossum/Dialictus spp.), and non-specialist (= polylectic) bees (Apis mellifera, Lassioglossum/Dialictus spp.) (Beutelspacher, 1971; Grant and Grant, 1979a, 1979b; Cota, 1993; McIntosh, 2005; Blair and Williamson, 2008; Fagua and Ackerman, 2011).
An annotated checklist of Wisconsin sap and short-winged
flower beetles (Coleoptera: Nitidulidae, Kateretidae).Insecta Mundi 20 (1-2): 69-84.
Some authors [23, 24] consider thrips (Megalurothrips sjostedti) (Trybon) and
flower beetles as some of the major insect pests of economic importance on cowpea.