大麦虫成虫活体的雌雄鉴别

大麦虫(Zophobas morio)属鞘翅目(Coleoptera)拟步甲科(Tenebrionidae)资源昆虫,其个体大、营养价值高,可作为高蛋白鲜活饲料,国外主要用作爬行类动物的活体饲料,我国主要用作高档宠物、人工养殖鱼类、鸟类等食虫动物的饲料(苗少娟,2010)。大麦虫幼虫营养成分较高,体内含蛋白质19.7%、脂肪17.7%、无氮浸出液1.1%、中性洗涤纤维

Identification of Alive Female and Male Adult of Zophobas morio ( Coleoptera: Tenebrionidae)

Zophobas morio(Coleoptera:Tenebrionidae),introduced in China in recent years,is a multi-purpose insect,and can be manually fed in a large number of individual,with high nutritional value,as a high-protein fodder,in particular,it can be used as an alternative to breeding a variety of natural enemies of insect host.In the artificial propagation,the male and female are needed to be identified for sexual pairing to ensure fecundity.To identify female and male adults of Z.morio,their morphological characteristics were studied through the careful observation in this paper.The results showed there was sexual dimorphism of external morphology of Z.morio adults.The frons of the female adult was flat while that of male adult was sunken.Additionally,the length,width and length-width ratio of the third antennal segment and anal plate were significant different between the female and male adults.Above morphological characteristics can be used to efficiently distinguish sex of Z.morio adults without damage,and the knowledge would be useful in artificial propagation of Z.morio.