Is it really a worm? With its wriggling movement here and there.. In fact it is not even a worm...As far as I could remember, this little creature came to my life during the course of my lab work period about a year ago at the Molecular & Genetic Engineering Lab; after a long period of deciding what insect species I should work with for a Master degree..Consequently, it had changed my life tremendously..until today..Thanks to the death of ca. 200 crickets during the initial lab rearing within a week due to..hmm not sure ..but I bet it was because of a viral infection that wiped off the entire colony just like the atomic bombings of Hiroshima & Nagasaki that eliminated almost the entire populations at that time!..SO horrible! cause everything was left juicy....Anyway, just what exactly this worm-like creature is, well, let me put a brief introduction of it in my own way......
The worm is actually a larva form of an insect species notably known as Zophobas morio Fabricius (Coleopteran: Tenebrionidae). The larva form is commonly dubbed as supermealworm...perhaps because it does look like a worm.. It is a species of darkling beetle that originates from tropical regions in Central and South America. Anyone who's familiar with the yellow mealworm, Tenebrio molitor, will notice many resemblances of T. molitor larva to that of Z. morio. Well, just like the silkworm, artificial domestication of this beetle had given rise to the generation of varieties of African, European, American and South East Asian subspecies. Well, just how the South East Asian subspecies differ from the European, African, American and now the new line of East Asian subspecies remains unknown since not many studies have been conducted on this species...
You can see the adult beetle, full grown larvae @ supermealworms and pupa...
(Photo source: http://home.versatel.nl/wanambi/insects.html)
