Phanaeus MacLeay

Edmonds, W. D., 2018, The dung beetle fauna of the Big Bend region of Texas (Coleoptera: Scarabaeidae: Scarabaeinae), Insecta Mundi 642, pp. 1-30 : 13

Phanaeus MacLeay

The genus Phanaeus embraces about 55 species distributed from the United States southward through Mexico and Central America into all but the southern cone of South America; of these, the 35 or so species included in the subgenus Phanaeus comprise a phyletic group virtually confined to North and Central America ( Edmonds 1994; Edmonds and Zidek 2012). The United States is home to six species, four of which reside in Texas, one in the Big Bend. The nesting behavior of Phanaeus is described by Halffter and Matthews (1966) and Halffter and Edmonds (1982). It involves the elaborate subterranean construction of a pear-shaped brood ball consisting of a spherical core of larval food (usually dung) encased in a thick casement of compressed soil. The large majority of the members of the genus are diurnal coprophages; many are quite common in pasture ecosystems.