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Family Trogidae
updated 7/6/98 |
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The family Trogidae, also known as the skin beetles, is comprised of about 300
species in three genera worlwide. Trogids are distinctive in possessing a flat abdomen
hidden in a side-view and a warty, tuberculate body, gray in color. Trogids are facultative
necrophages: they are late-arrivers at a carcass where they feed on the dried skin, bone,
hair, or feathers. Many species are associated -- sometimes exclusively -- with bird nests and
mammal burrows where they feed on the dried wastes and shed feathers or hair. Adults are
capable of stridulating when disturbed and will often play dead by retracting their
appendages. Fourteen species from two genera are recorded from Wisconsin.
Genus Omorgus
scabrosus (Beauvious) 
suberosus (Fabricius)
Genus Trox
aequalis Say
atrox LeConte
capillaris Say
foveicollis Harold
hamatus Robinson
laticollis LeConte
robinsoni Vaurie
scaber (L.)
sordidus LeConte
striatus Melsheimer
unistriatus Beauvois
variolatus Melsheimer
For more information or comments, please send email to:
young@entomology.wisc.edu or nlkriska@entomology.wisc.edu
This webpage was created by Michael Young.
