The Nest and Brood Ball of Canthon (Canthon) Virens aff. paraguayanus Balthasar (Coleoptera: Scarabaeidae: Scarabaeinae)

Abstract

Behavioral traits, such as nest and brood ball structure, remain poorly studied among the species of the genus Canthon Hoffmannsegg. Within the Canthon virens species-group (Halffter and Martínez 1977), Canthon (Canthon) virens virens (Mannerheim) makes brood balls provisioned with queens of leaf-cutter ants, crickets, and cockroaches and buries them at a shallow depth (Forti et al. 2012; Halffter et al. 2013). The nesting behavior of the remaining species of this group is completely unknown.