papilio wrote:rather than taking the word of Wikianswers which stated simply "Do beetles molt? Yes they do."
Thank you for clarifying where the mis-information came from. I did a Google search on
wikianswers do beetles molt and was immediately directed to
http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Do_beetles_moult?#slide=1, "Do beetles moult?". Continuing to the next slide, I saw the simple answer "yes it does".
Well, context is everything, so I thought I would see where this was going. Perhaps, I hoped, they were going to tell me about larvae.
But instead I was aghast to find this sequence:
Q: Do beetles moult?
A: yes it does
Q: How many times does a beetle moult?
A: A lot of times on average, depending on the type of beetle
Q: Does mealworm beetle moults and eats a lot at its larval stage?
A: Yes, it eats a lot at the larval stage
Q: What are beetles?
A: Beetles are bugs which have 6 legs, 2 body segments and a wing case if you see a bug which has all of these it means that you have found yourselves a rolypoly which are beetles.
I know this is just one sequence of questions and answers, but even so I feel quite safe in concluding that wiki.answers.com is not a reliable source of information.
Ironically, but not inappropriately, some sort of information block next to all these "answers" said this:
Supervisors
Stupid little genius
Trust: 2979
Beetles Supervisor
I will resist further comment, though the effort is painful.
--Rik