Brood ball construction by the non-brooding Coprini Sulcophanaeus carnifex and Dichotomius torulosus (Coleoptera, Scarabaeidae)

ABSTRACT.

• 1 Feeding burrows made by S.carnifex and D.torulosus adults consisted of tunnels filled with sausage-shaped masses of dung. Brood balls were made by taking fragments of dung from an adjacent feeding burrow and aggregating them into a small sphere which was gradually enlarged and then coated with soil.
• 2 S.carnifex adult females showed no response to their own eggs (unlike Copris lunaris: Klemperer, H.G. (1982) Ecological Erltonzology, 7, 155–167). S.carnifex larvae made and maintained an air channel to the upper pole of the ball and they are in this respect preadapted to receive parental care.
• 3 Compared with a brood mass, a brood ball was less likely to be attacked by Meptoparasitic larvae. The soil coat retarded drying of the brood ball by increasing the total mass of moisturecontaining material.