Designed foraging behavior of Lasioderma serricone and future dividend for procreation

Abstract

The present research work explains experimentally about how the foraging behaviour of cigarette beetle larvae can make an excellent opportunity for its reproductive success in future when same larvae become adult. The larvae was found to make burrows and tunnels in grains as a part of its normal feeding activity and incidentally the adult insects emerged from the same larvae selectively uses the burrows and tunnels in the grain to lay eggs. Besides the burrows and tunnels offering protection to eggs, the eggs laid inside the above sites showed significantly short egg to pupa conversion time and short pupal phase when compared to the eggs laid in the open field. Our findings indicate the larval foraging behavior is not just part of its physical survival but has got great evolutionary significance for higher reproductive success. We have studied the above by harvesting age and sex matched cigarette beetle in grains as well as the flour made of above grains. Also we studied the insects reared from the larvae that were grown in grains found to make burrows and tunnels as well as the larvae grown in flour.