The Hercules Beetle and Its Captive Breeding and Rearing
By Kay
Brief description of imago
Male imago 46-172 mm including horns; Female imago 50-80 mm. Male imago is dull black on prothorax and yellowish-brown on fore wings. Male imago's horns have several small teeth along inner edge, and are slightly bent inwardly at tip. Head of a large male imago reaches to the length of its prothorax and abdomen combined (Nagai, 2002) (For photos, see GALLERY section).
Habitat
Tropical rain forests (Nagai, 2002).
Range
Ssp. hercules is confined to Guadeloupe and Dominica (Nagai, 2002).
Occurance time
The imagoes seem active throughout the year since they are rather long-lived. They emerge after June, the start of the rainy season, reaching peak between June and August (Unno, 2000).
Food
In a case of ssp. lichyi, several male imagoes have been observed during the daytime hours gnawing the bark of a Melastomataceae sp. off with foretibiae and feeding on the sap flow from the scar in a locality of Tena in Ecuador at about 1,500 meters in elevation in May. At a different observation site in an eastern state, several larvae (ssp. ecuatorianus?) have been found inside the hollow, filled with organic debris, of a soft, rotting fallen log of Rubiaceae sp. (diameter: about 1 meter), which was standing and cut down by the landowner (Kuribayashi, 2006); At the same observation site in Tena, two male imagoes have been observed during the morning hours gnawing the bark of a Melastomataceae sp. off with foretibiae and feeding on the sap flow in December. The night before, two female imagoes were attracted to light by the 'light trap' collecting method at 15 degrees Celsius near the site (Sato, 2007).
Life cycle
The insect's life cycle seems largely unknown in the wild (Unno, 2000). However, under captive rearing (25 degrees Celsius in summer and 18 degrees Celsius in winter), using a feeding substrate, the author has experienced the following:
1) Duration of egg incubation: about 1 month;
2) Duration of larval stages:
Male: 12-18 months (L1: 1 month; L2: 2 months; and L3: 9-15 months); and
Female: 12 months (L1: 1 month; L2: 2 months; and L3: 9 months); and
3) Duration of pupal stage: 2-2.5 months.
