Dermestes beetles pollinating flowers

The author of this article, Sherwin Carlquist, is not from Africa, but from the United States of America. She describes how the plant, cultivated in California, attracted local dermestid beetles (misidentified as dung beetles in the original article). The two species showcased in the article's photograph appear to be Dermestes frischii (top right) and Dermestes talpinus (lower left). The latter species is only found in North America (Háva, 2025), while jackal food is native to South Africa. That makes the number of Dermestes species that have been documented to make use of this flower at least three different species, including a species not found on this plant's continent of origin. A border-crossing succes!

For the people that might consider this flower as an easy lure to attract dermestid beetles: Hydnora africana is a difficult plant to cultivate (Onszaden, n.d. 1). The main reason for this is the plant's parasitic lifestyle. Jackal food grows under the ground, with exception of the flowers, where it makes contact with the roots of the host plant: Euphorbia caput-medusae, also known as Medusa's head. Seeds of jackal food and it's host plant Medusa's head can be found online, for the one who is up to this challange. Please let us know when you try!

For anyone that achieved to grow jackal food flowers in the European Union: we will send a free batch of dermestid beetles for pollination in exchange for some nice photographs documenting the process and showing the beetles inside the flowers!

Some time later, I stumbled upon a photo made by Pedro Miguel in Portugal, also uploaded to iNaturalist. Four adult beetles are seen inside the florescence of what appears to be the Dracunculus vulgaris. Altough the details of the beetles are not very clear, the white hairs on the lateral margins on the pronotum creating a 'fringed' look is typical of D. frischii - whom is also called the fringed larder beetle. Very similar photos were uploaded by Mimi Richardson to a Facebook group dedicated to the insects of south and west Western Australia. The details of the beetle in these photos are again not very clear, but it also appears to be D. frischii.  

It is noteworhy how often this species is found in these flowers: D. frischii was also found inside the inflorescence of both Dracunculus creticus and D. vulgaris in Creta and the species was found inside a D. vulgaris florescence in Washington (Meeuse 1959). D. frischii was found on a D. vulgaris flower in Greece (Steiblys, 2022). In Gibraltar, both D. frischii and Dermestes undulatus were captured within the flower of D. vulgaris (Meeuse 2009).

D. undulatus was also found on a D. vulgaris fower in Italia (bracchettogiallo 2020). Christopher Rogers noted that he witnessed Dermestes marmoratus, a North American species (Háva, 2025), pollinating Dracunulus - and that he also saw this species pollinating Helicodiceros and Arum. In all instances the dermestid beetles were attracted to the flowers by the emitted odour. The smell of both Dracunculus and Helicodiceros are described as rotting carrion (Onszaden, n.d. 2; Stensmyr et al., 2003), wheras different Arum species mimick various types of dung (Kite et al., 1998).

Sometimes Dermestes beetles seem to mistake the smell of dung for carrion, since Dermestes tulpinus was found under a cat scat (Murray, 2006), Dermestes fasciatus was found on a coyote scat (Eaton, 2016) and D. frischii was found on a fresh fox scat (Suecee, 2015). Note that all the scats belong to carnivores.

However, not every visit to flowers can be explained by the attraction of odour. Sandro Kiladze uploaded a sighting of Dermestes kaszabi covered in pollen to iNaturalist. The flowers the beetle walks on seem to be yellow umbellifers located in Georgia. Pollen are also visible on Dermestes coronatus that was photographed by Kazenas on a yellow dandelion species located in Kazakhstan. It is known from the subgenus Dermestes that they can digest some plant based materials, but for the subgenus Dermestinus such behaviour is not known - and these two species are from the latter subgenus.

Pietro Niolu uploaded photos of Dermestes hirticollis, subgenus Montandonia, to Flickr. In multiple photos, the beetle is seen on white flowers. From the closely related species Dermestes depressus it is known that the larvae also eat pollen (Zhantiev, 2001).