How beach beetles use wheel locomotion to roll away from danger
March 24th, 2011 - 5:11 pm ICT by ANILondon, Mar 24 (ANI): Biologists have discovered how a beach beetle rolls away from danger across the sand - it simply leaps into the air and curves its body into a perfect spinning hoop, all propelled by the wind.
The beetle, biologically known as Cicindela dorsalis media, is one non-human animal that makes use of the wheel, and the only one known to use the wind for propulsion, reports New Scientist.
Alan Harvey, biologist at Georgia Southern University in Statesboro, and his student Sarah Zukoff discovered the remarkable behaviour when Zukoff accidentally kicked a sand dune on a coastal island in Georgia and dislodged some beetle larvae.
They then captured the whole mechanism in high-speed video images, which revealed that each larva begins its flight with a high, twisting leap that helps it to orient itself to the wind.
They also found that the larva held its legs out to the sides as it rolled.
According to Harvey, the beetles might be using this odd form of locomotion to escape quickly from their main predator, a parasitic wasp that invades their burrows and lays eggs in the larvae.
The study is published in PLoS One. (ANI)
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