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Leptinus occidentamericanus
Range:
Western North America (check Peck 1982).
Natural History:
The species of Leptinus (two in North America) occur in the nests and fur of mice, shrews, and moles and occasionally in the nests of ground-nesting Hymenoptera (Borror et al. 1981). The mouse nest beetle, Leptinus occidentamericanus, is restricted to the nests and fur of small mammals such as mice, shrews, voles. Adults and larvae probably scavenge organic materials from the nests and in host fur (Peck 1982). Adults are phoretic upon the hosts (Peck 1982).
In the Spring, 2001 survey of the Carabidae of The Evergreen State College campus, two shrews were collected in pitfall traps from transect B (traps B-10 and B-13). The pitfall traps were opened on 25 May by Orion Shannon and Summer Peterson, and harvested by Orion on 26 May. One of the shrews had two adult Leptinus running in its fur, and the other had one. I identified the shrews as Sorex vagrans, using Ingles (1965).
References:
Borror, D. J., D. M. De Long, and C. A. Triplehorn. 1981. An Introduction to the Study of Insects, fifth edition. Saunders College Publishing, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA.
Ingles, L. G. 1965. Mammals of the Pacific States. Stanford University Press, Stanford, California.
Peck, S.B. 1982. A review of the ectoparasitic Leptinus beetles of North America (Coleoptera:Leptinidae). Canadian Journal of Zoology. 60: 1517-1527.
Last updated Monday, July 24, 2006, by Lisa Ferrier
