Roughened darkling beetle
The roughened darkling beetle is a dark beetle of the cold north. It loves forests where there has been a fire, because its babies grow under the bark of burnt birch trees. It can survive being frozen far below zero.
How fast is it?
Fun facts
Special sugars and an antifreeze in its body help it survive very cold temperatures.
Its babies take two or three years to grow up.
In one part of Sweden it is called the kitchen beetle, because it crawls out of firewood when people burn it indoors in winter.
It is now rare and has disappeared from southern Sweden, because there are fewer burnt forests.
Most asked questions about Roughened darkling beetle
?Why does the roughened darkling beetle like forest fires?
Its babies grow under the bark of birch trees that were damaged by fire.
?Is the roughened darkling beetle rare?
Yes. It is listed as vulnerable, because modern forestry leaves few burnt birch forests.
For bug experts
- Scientific name
- Upis ceramboides
- Group
- Beetles
- Family
- Tenebrionidae
- Classification
- Insecta > Coleoptera > Tenebrionidae
- Lives on
- Europe, North America
Where the facts come from
- Upis ceramboides (Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0): what it looks like, where it lives, what it eats, sizes and fun facts, retold in simple words.
- Picture by Stanislav Snäll. CC BY 3.0, Wikimedia Commons. The sticker of this bug is drawn from this picture.
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