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Why these beetles seek out scorched Earth

When male beetles arrive at a forest fire, they have one thing on their mind: sex. They often perch on a tree “close to burning or glowing wood or hot ashes,” researchers explain, and when they find a female, “they try to copulate vigorously.” Then the females lay eggs under the bark of burnt trees.

The simplest reason why they do this is that their offspring, the beetle larvae, can only persist on the wood of burned trees. This makes some sense: When a tree has been scorched by flame, it has a weak or nonexistent defense system, allowing the beetles to easily bore through the wood under the bark. “The beetles can get in there and feed freely,” Kimsey said.

Fire beetles likely lay their eggs in forest fires for a few other reasons as well. Most insects tend to avoid recently burned areas, so the beetle larvae have fewer competitors — they have a wood buffet all to themselves. These regions also typically have fewer predators, such as birds. (Although, in a remarkable example of evolution, some species, like the black-backed woodpecker, have evolved to eat fire-associated insect larvae.)

There’s also some evidence that beetle larvae develop faster in these environments because heat speeds up growth. That means beetles produce more babies in less time.

A rare climate change winner?

Rising temperatures linked to climate change are already a problem for many ecosystems and species. They’re fueling coral-killing heat waves, causing birds to shrink, and generally making much of the planet less suitable for life.

At least in the short term, fire beetles may defy these negative trends. Climate change is likely to make wildfires more widespread and extreme, and scientists suspect these beetles can only breed with fire.

For now, this is just speculation, Kimsey said. “We have no idea what they’re doing when there isn’t a fire,” she said. But it’s clear that climate change will produce not only losers but some winners — and these beetles may be one of them. Indeed, a world on fire may be a world full of horny beetles.

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