The red flour beetle is a tenebrionid beetle. It is a worldwide stored product pest and model organism for ethological research.
Red flour beetles attack stored grain products (flour, cereals, pasta, biscuits, beans, nuts, etc.) causing loss and damage. They may cause an allergic response but are not known to spread disease and cause no damage to structures or furniture.
The red flour beetle is of Indo-Australian origin and less able to survive outdoors than the closely related species Tribolium confusum. It has, as a consequence, a more southern distribution, though both species are worldwide in heated premises. The adults are long-lived and may live for more than three years. Although previously regarded as a relatively sedentary insect, it has been shown by a combination of molecular and ecological research that T. castaneum will disperse considerable distances by adult flight
Read more about Red Flour Beetle: Appearance, References
Famous quotes containing the words red, flour and/or beetle:
“Red lips are not so red As the stained stones kissed by the English dead.”
—Wilfred Owen (1893–1918)
“Mathematics may be compared to a mill of exquisite workmanship, which grinds your stuff to any degree of fineness; but, nevertheless, what you get out depends on what you put in; and as the grandest mill in the world will not extract wheat flour from peascods, so pages of formulae will not get a definite result out of loose data.”
—Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–1895)
“The sense of death is most in apprehension,
And the poor beetle that we tread upon
In corporal sufferance finds a pang as great
As when a giant dies.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)