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in north-central Nebraska (Ratcliffe and
Jameson 1992, Ratcliffe on-going studies),
and, as of late 1995, southern South Dakota
(Backlund and Marrone 1995).
Anderson (1982a) suggested that N.
americanus was an obligate denizen of primary
forest, and that the coincident decline
of this species and the destruction of this
habitat were linked. Anderson suggested
that dependence on larger vertebrate carcasses
for breeding may have restricted N.
americanus to ecosystems with deeper soils,
hence mature forests with deep, humic soils.
Lomolino et al. (1995) tested this hypothesis
and found it to be false; N. americanus exhibited
the widest niche breadth of the four most
common Nicrophorus species present in their
studies with the Arkansas and Oklahoma
silphids. They found that N. americanus
was broadly distributed across habitats,
and that there was no preference for forest
or shrub cover. The extant populations on
treeless Block Island in Rhode Island and in
the grassland areas of Ft. Chaffee Military
THE CARRION BEETLES OF NEBRASKA 61
Fig. 105. Present and historical distribution of Nicrophorus americanus.
Reservation in Arkansas also do not support
Anderson’s idea nor do the records from
relatively treeless west-central Nebraska
and South Dakota. Creighton et al. (1993)
reported beetles occur both in oak-hickory
forests and in grasslands in Oklahoma;
higher numbers were observed in grasslands
than in bottomland forests (where, presumably,
foraging flight is severely hampered by
denser undergrowth). Considering the broad
geographic range formerly occupied by the
American burying beetle, it is unlikely that
vegetation or soil type were historically limiting
(U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service 1991).
Today, the American burying beetle seems
to be largely restricted to areas most undisturbed
by human influence.
In Nebraska, the Sandhills is just such
an area, and it is there that the beetles have
been recently rediscovered. Gothenburg,
Brady, North Platte, the Valentine National
Wildlife Refuge, and Jamison are all locales
in which beetles have been found during
1994 and 1995. Mark Peyton, Senior District