Farmed crickets (Orthoptera: Gryllidae) raised with dermestids (Coleoptera: Dermestidae) suffer from reduced and delayed growth, but not enough to explain reports of dramatic yield loss.

ABSTRACT: The mass production of insects for food and feed is an expanding North American industry. Facilities that mass rear insects are at risk of pest infestations because the optimal environmental conditions for rearing beneficial species may also support the development of pest species. Here, we present the first recorded results detailing the interactions between dermestids and farmed crickets. Cricket farms have reported extremely low harvest yield during heavy dermestid infestations, but the exact reasons for this low yield are unknown. Many dermestid larvae are covered in dense, detachable, barbed setae called hastisetae, which are used by the larvae as an active trapping system against arthropod predators. We designed a series of experiments to test the hypotheses that a dermestid pest of

SUBMITTER: Muzzatti MJ 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC11818372 | biostudies-literature | 2025 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature