Insect larvae are often thought of as worming their way around their environment, legless and slow-moving—or even immobile. But a paper published in PLOS ONE yesterday (January 19) reports a peculiar behavior in the larvae of Laemophloeus biguttatus, commonly known as the lined flat bark beetle: jumping. This rapid locomotion was previously unknown in this insect species, according to the authors of the paper, and has only been commonly observed in fly maggots.
The research team collected and identified beetle larvae from the North Carolina State University campus in 2019. They filmed the jumping larvae with a high-speed camera to capture their movements. They also assessed the muscle mass of the developing beetles using microCT scans and SEM imaging to further investigate the mechanism behind the jittery bugs. The authors report that the Laemophloeus biguttatus beetle larvae can jump further than their body length both horizontally and vertically.
The larvae ...
