Pre-oral-digestion
Guides
Nicrophorus marginatus
margined sexton beetle, margined burying beetle, red and black burying beetle
Nicrophorus marginatus is a burying beetle in the family Silphidae, described by Fabricius in 1801. Adults are medium-sized beetles, 12–28 mm in length, with distinctive shiny black bodies and red-orange elytral bands. The species exhibits extreme physiological sensitivity to desiccation, losing 1–5% body mass per hour in low humidity conditions, yet maintains diurnal activity patterns and extends into arid habitats through behavioral thermoregulation. Like other Nicrophorus species, it engages in complex biparental care, burying small vertebrate carcasses and provisioning larvae with regurgitated, pre-digested food.