ranging from 1.5 to 8 mm and from bright reddish-brown with orange patches on 
the wing tips to a shiny ebony black. Adults of many species appear yellowish or 
grayish from the dense pubescence covering their bodies. To varying degrees, all 
species share common characteristics of a hoodlike pronotum that conceals the head 
when viewed from above, convex body shape, and the contractile ability to shield 
their appendages by retraction. Many genera and species can retract their appen- 
dages into specialized grooves when at rest; thus, they resemble the seeds of their 
host plant. 
Members of this family have widely diverse habits, food hosts, and habitats. 
Anobiid beetles occur in most forest habitats, but many are not well known or 
frequently collected. Apparently, no species causes damage of economic signifi- 
cance to living plant material although many species in the genus Ernobius are 
frequent secondary invaders of aborted pine cones. Many species smaller in size 
feed on puffballs and other fungi or on plant seeds, but the majority of the larger 
species have wood-infesting habits. Many feed on dead twigs and branches or 
aborted cones, others in or beneath the bark of decadent trees. Many other species 
require bark-free dead wood such as branch stubs, lightning scars, or fallen trees. 
These species perform a function similar to that of subterranean termites and help 
reduce dead wood to nutrients for new plant growth. Some species with this 
function are restricted to wood of deciduous trees, others to only coniferous wood, 
and still others can attack wood of both types. Some of the species that attack 
seasoned wood have become frequent pests of wood in fabricated structures, 
especially when conditions surrounding the wood are favorable to their develop- 
ment. 
Two nonwood-feeding species have become so adapted to human activities that 
they are now cosmopolitan pests of stored products. These are the drugstore 
beetle, Sregobium paniceum (L.), and the cigarette beetle, Lasioderma serricorne 
(F.), and they will feed in a wide variety of products including cereal grains, spices, 
tobacco, etc. Occasionally, they will excavate wood near food products when 
pupating, thus suggesting that they originaliy had wood-infesting habits. 
Only a few species that most commonly damage seasoned wood in storage or use 
will be discussed. Adults of most species attacking seasoned wood are reddish 
brown to brownish black and range from 2.8 to 7.5 mm in length. With the 
exception of a few species, eggs are usually laid on the wood surface in cracks or 
crevices or in the holes made by emerging adults. The larvae are whitish with 
yellowish-brown heads, grublike, and may be 10 mm in length at maturity. The size 
of the adults and their exit holes are variable within a species. Exit holes are 
circular, typically 3 to 4 mm in diameter. The duration of the life cycie varies with 
the temperature and relative humidity conditions surrounding the wood as well as 
with its nutritive content. The cycle may require | to 5 years or more. 
Many of the wood-infesting species can be identified with keys (/253, 1285). 
Xyletinus peltatus (Harris) is the most widely distributed species in the Eastern 
United States, with a range from southern Canada to Texas to Florida. X. peltatus 1s 
probably the most common species infesting structures in the southern half of its 
range (869, 1/42, 1308) and the third most common species in the northern half 
(1086). Adult beetles are seldom seen because they are nocturnal and may live for 
only a few weeks. On the Mississippi Gulf Coast, adult emergence may begin in 
mid-April, peak in late May or early June, and continue through September, but 80 
to 90 percent of the adults emerge within a 4- to 6-week period surrounding the 
peak of emergence (/309). These beetles cause the greatest damage in the warm, 
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