Burying beetle boycotting Ohio home


It's a simple enough trap.

Sink a plastic cup into the dirt, paper-clip a rotten piece of chicken to its side, cover the top to keep the raccoons out and cross your fingers.

Despite years of trying, however, Ohio State University scientist Dave Horn hasn't trapped a single American burying beetle.

They should be there, especially because researchers have tried to reintroduce the species in Ohio.

Once widespread in grassy and open woods nationwide, the American burying beetle is listed as a federal endangered species. It is found in the wild on Block Island, R.I., and in parts of Arkansas, Kansas, Nebraska, Oklahoma, South Dakota and Texas.

Nicrophorus americanus, one of the larger burying beetles, was last seen in Ohio in the 1970s.

The insect is a part of nature's cleanup crew, burying the carcasses of small animals as deep as 3 feet underground, and then laying their eggs in them.

It's fascinating to watch, Horn said. Adult beetles excavate the soil beneath a carcass, sinking it into the ground like a submarine slipping under water.

Most Junes since the late 1990s, he has released hundreds of the insects at the Waterloo Wildlife Experiment Station in Athens County.

But none seem to survive the winter.

"I think they may be present in very low numbers," said Horn, an entomologist. "The offspring, when they come out of the ground, have the tendency to disperse."

Horn plans to release at least 100 more beetle pairs in June at Waterloo. But if he doesn't find any that he released last year, he'll look for new test sites for 2008.

The savannahlike patchwork of grassland and trees at the Wilds, a 10,000-acre conservation center southeast of Zanesville, looks promising.

So do parts of the Wayne National Forest.

Jim Dooley, a biologist at Muskingum College, said other species of burying beetles live in the Wilds.

"Unfortunately, we don't know much about their basic ecology. We need to study them more," Dooley said. "Competition ... disease, what makes a population go up and down is still something we struggle with."

Horn said the decline in wild turkeys might have helped eliminate the American burying beetle from the state and that the successful reintroduction of wild turkeys into Ohio will pay off.

His frustration is contrary to a long list of successes wildlife biologists have had in reintroducing American bald eagles, otters, beavers and wild turkeys into the state.

"When the beetles disappeared from Ohio (in the 1970s) ... there was fairly low turkey population," he said.

"With a higher turkey population, the poults (young birds) make a good carrion source," he said.

American burying beetle

(Nicrophorus americanus)

Size: up to 1.5 inches long

Color: black with orange or yellow spots

Range: Block Island, R.I., eastern Oklahoma, northern Texas and parts of Arkansas, Kansas, Nebraska and South Dakota

Habitat: areas of mixed woodlands and grasslands

Natural history: Both males and females use chemical receptors in their antennae to locate decomposing carcasses, whether to eat or to house eggs.

Sources: Northern State University, Ohio State University