In business since the time of the dinosaursDung beetles have a diet that many of us would find abhor

In business since the time of the dinosaursDung beetles have a diet that many of us would find abhorrent, but they’re pretty cool little critters. They can bury dung up to 250 times heavier than themselves in a single night, they play an essential role in ecosystem functioning (by improving nutrient cycling and soil structure), and they are the only non-human animals to navigate and orient themselves using the Milky Way. But a new study has added to their coolness: dung beetles evolved alongside the dinosaurs.The findings indicate that dung beetles (family: Scarabaeidae) originated in the early-mid Cretaceous (115 to 130 mya) - around the same time as dinosaurs and pterosaurs - placing their emergence about 30 million years earlier than previously thought. Around this time period, flowering plants (angiosperms) came into ecological dominance, growing in both number and diversity. Lead author of the study, Dr Nicole Gunter, hypothesizes that the two events are linked. For the first time, dinosaurs feeding on these flowering plants may have produced dung palatable enough for the beetle to feed on. In this way, dinosaurs and flowering plants operated in unison to provide a brand new niche for evolution.We all know which way the dinosaurs went, and thankfully the beetle was able to avoid their fate. Though they took heavy species losses, dung beetles likely moved on to mammalian dung instead, and evidence suggests they exploded in diversity alongside mammals later in the Paleogene. It serves as another reminder that the natural world is a complex web of interactions, with innumerable and inextricable facets. Also, something about the thought of dung beetles busily scurrying among the feet of dinosaurs makes me smile.VPReferences: Original paper (open access): http://bit.ly/1YagHoPhttp://bit.ly/1MrcGHwImage credit: Andi Gentsch (https://flic.kr/p/bugfio) -- source link
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