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Updated: June 3, 2025
Let us consider the fate in store for the two species. The first is much more favoured, since a happy chance permits each germ to produce an individual; in the second, each individual which completes its evolution deprives several of its brothers of life. And even this only happens in the most favourable cases, for it may be that not one Sitaris in the chamber may reach the adult state.
Let a single link of the chain be broken, and the entire species of the Sitaris is no longer possible.
As soon as the female bee deposits her eggs on the surface of the honey stored in the cells, the larvae of the Sitaris leap on the eggs and devour them.
With both Mylabres, the batch consists of some forty eggs, a very small number compared with those of the Oil-beetle and the Sitaris. This limited family was already foreseen, judging by the short space of time which the egg-layer spends in her underground lodging.
Lastly, about the middle of August, it tears the double bag that contains it, pierces the lid of the Anthophora's cell, enters a corridor and appears outside in quest of the other sex. I have told how, while digging in search of the Sitaris, I found two cells belonging to Meloe cicatricosus. One contained an Anthophora's egg; with this egg was a yellow Louse, the primary larva of the Meloe.
But suppose that this diet varies, that the environment in which they are called upon to live changes, that the circumstances accompanying their development are liable to great changes: it then becomes evident that the moult may and even must adapt the organization of the larva to these new conditions of existence. The primary larva of the Sitaris lives on the body of the Anthophora.
At Avignon, where I have not yet seen Sitaris humeralis, the same species of Anthophora, observed at almost the same season, while pillaging the lilac-blossom, was always free of young Sitaris-grubs; at Carpentras, on the contrary, where there is not a single Anthophora-colony without Sitares, nearly three-quarters of the specimens which I examined carried a few of these larvæ in their fleece.
The primary larva of the Mylabris therefore does not imitate those of the Sitaris and the Oil-beetle; it does not settle in the fleece of its host to get itself carried to the cell crammed with victuals. The task of seeking and finding the heap of food falls upon its own shoulders. The small number of the eggs that constitute a batch also leads to the same conclusion.
The larvæ of Meloë and Sitaris in their fully grown condition possess the caterpillar form, but the new born larvæ of these genera show the Campodea form. He considers that the caterpillar form is a degraded Campodea form, the result of its stationary life in plants or in wood. For reasons which we will not pause here to discuss, we have always regarded the eruciform type of larva as the highest.
It is motionless, the head is mask-like, without movable appendages, and the feet are represented by six tubercles. This is more properly speaking the semi-pupa, and the mature pupa grows beneath its mask-like form, which is finally moulted. Fabre has also, in a lively and well-written account, given a history of Sitaris, a European beetle, somewhat resembling Meloë.
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