Aphodius (Plagiogonus) arenarius Olivier, 1789

Akhmetova, Lilia A., Kurochkin, Andrei S. & Frolov, Andrey V., 2024, Dung-beetles (Coleoptera, Scarabaeidae, Aphodiinae, Scarabaeinae) feeding on faeces of steppe marmots Marmota bobak (Rodentia, Sciuridae) in Middle Volga territory, Biodiversity Data Journal 12, pp. e 125090-e 125090 : e125090-

publication ID	https://doi.org/ 10.3897/BDJ.12.e125090
DOI	https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.13800794
persistent identifier	https://treatment.plazi.org/id/3E38AA1B-E367-578E-A9A1-60D01E070FF4
treatment provided by	Biodiversity Data Journal by Pensoft
scientific name	Aphodius (Plagiogonus) arenarius Olivier, 1789
status

Treatment

Materials

Type status: Other material. Occurrence: recordedBy: A. S. Kurochkin; individualCount: 1; lifeStage: adult; occurrenceID: FC307EB8-3A06-5975-8EBF-5D72ABB1C638; Taxon: scientificName: Aphodius arenarius ; kingdom: Animalia; phylum: Arthropoda; class: Insecta; order: Coleoptera ; family: Scarabaeidae ; genus: Aphodius ; taxonRank: species; Location: country: Russia; stateProvince: Samara; locality: Bol’shechernigovskij distr., 3.9 km SSW of Polyanskij vill., gully bottom, forb-grass steppe. ; decimalLatitude: 51.85; decimalLongitude: 50.89; georeferenceProtocol: GPS; Identification: identifiedBy: L. A. Akhmetova; dateIdentified: 2023; Event: samplingProtocol: From feces of Marmota bobak , in toilet burrow; eventDate: 2023-04 - 28; Record Level: collectionID: urn:lsid:biocol.org:col:34969; institutionCode: ZIN; collectionCode: Coleoptera ; basisOfRecord: PreservedSpecimen

Distribution

This species is widely distributed in Europe, occurs also in the Caucasus, the Transcaucasus, Turkey, Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan. In Russia, it is known from the steppe zone from Kursk Prov. to West Siberia.

Biology

In Russia, the species occurs in rodent burrows (mostly of marmots and sousliks). In some localities, beetles can be found in large numbers near burrow entrances in May-June ( Isajev 1995). However, in the UK, this species was collected under vegetable debris and sheep, cow and horse dung ( Jessop 1986). It was also collected from rabbit latrines (Jason Mate, pers. comm.) Probably, in west Europe, in the areas without Marmotini rodents, this species develop in burrows of other rodents or rabbits, but its life cycle needs further research.