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Stephanie Yusif
Professor Hannah Rogers
STS 2500
30 May 2016
The amazing life of the Forked Fungus Beetles
The forked fungus beetle is a North American species of dark beetle and the scientific
name for it is Bolitotherus cornutus. They are also a group of insects that form the order
Coleoptera. These creatures are very small and adorable (at least from my point of view). One of
the things that made me want to know more it was attending one of Vince Formicas lectures and
when he talked about how dedicated the males are when they want to mate with females, I found
myself wanting to hear more them.
Vince Formica is an assistant professor of Evolutionary Biology at Swarthmore College.
His lab is currently exploring the process of social selection in the forked fungus beetle
(Bolitotherus cornutus). His team and he are exploring whether the addition of social selection
models further improve their understanding of the selective processes at work in this species. In
addition, they are also venturing into the world of animal social networks to determine their role
in phenotypic evolution. He is also a very nice person, and when I asked to interview him, he
was very welcoming and willing to share his knowledge.
The forked fungus beetle is a holometabolic insect, therefore its life cycle includes four
life stages: egg, larva, pupa, and adult.
Questions and Answers:
Q: How do the species generally form a social network?
They form the network forms just because individuals interact with each other. So,
anytime youve got a population where individuals interact with each other youre going
to get some sort of network as long as there are individuals interacting with more than

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just one individual, he said. However, what he is interested in is if those networks mean
anything. Does it have any significance for their evolution? That is one of the answers he
is trying to find throughout his research.
Q: Why the forked fungus beetles specifically?
They looked very good when researching them, they seemed to have the right
characteristics for such a research. First, they stay in one place most of the summer.
Second, can survey a large number of their population very easily. Finally, they are super
easy to capture, you can literally walk up and grab them.
Q: What are some of the differences between males and females?
Males have horns and hair while females done.
The females lay eggs while males dont.
Females are more connected in the networks than males.
The females have no control on when the mating happens (when the male dances on the
female back) but they have complete control whether he can mate with her or not.
Q: How do they breed?
The females lay eggs on the surface of the log one at a time and the process takes half an
hour, they put coding over it and they seal it to the fungus and then the egg hatches into
the fungus.
Q: How many times do they breed during their lifetime?
They can breed as long as they can live if they have a healthy environment, food and
weather temperature as far as lab researches proved so far. However, these conditions are
not always available in the wild therefore, it varies depending on the environment
situation that they are facing.
Q: How do they mate?
The male beetle jumps on the female beetles back and dances on her from half an hour
up to nineteen hours. He bangs on her carapace, he rags his genitalia on her face and rubs
chemicals on her antenna until she allows him to mate with her or until he gives up. In
addition, the research shows that males investigate more time and energy on larger
females than on smaller ones which means that their qualities are supposed to be better
than smaller ones.
Q: Why do they vary in sizes?
They vary in sizes depending on the quality of the food they ate when they were little as
well as their genetics just like humans heights for example.
Q: How many years do they live?
Eight years is the oldest that they have found; however, still not certain that that is the
oldest they can live or not.

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Moreover, there are still many important questions that do not have answers about these
species such as when does the male decide to stop dancing on the females back? Do they
senesce (Senescing meaning if their age years are the same as the humans or not; for example,
the dog aging idea)? How does the physical environment affect the social interaction of species?
All of these and more are very important questions that still do not have an answer to them.
Thus, when I asked Formica where would he like to take this research farther he said, I think
right now we got a big project ahead of us, it is kind of continuing this project of trying to
understand this type of species, their behaviors and their evolution. It will depends more on the
funding of the government to the research because it cost a lot of money to do researches like
these.
At the end of the interview, Formica showed me a male and a female beetle and he also
showed me how they take DNA from them in the lab. Anyone can exhale on them while they are
flipped on their backs and they bleed a liquid that is their DNA it is called reflexive bleeding.
Apart from the scene and how amazing it is, after they bleed the DNA, the whole place smells
like scotch or Band-Aids or Dettol. Finally, this interview was a very neat experience for me and
I enjoyed learning more about Forked Fungus Beetles and once Formica finishes his research, I
will definitely want to know all about it.

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Work Cited
"Bolitotherus Cornutus." Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, n.d. Web. 29 May 2016.
Formica, Vince. "VInce Formica." Vince Formica. Swarthmore, 2006. Web. 29 May 2016.