Natural History Wanderings

Vox  reports

Fueled by a late-summer heat wave, several large wildfires have been burning across the Western US, forcing thousands of people to flee their homes and turning the sky in parts of Southern California an eerie orange.

This is of course bad for pretty much everyone. Except for Melanophila beetles.

These insects, which are roughly the size of pumpkin seeds, are pyrophilous — meaning, they love fire. They actually depend on it for their reproduction. When most animals are fleeing from wildfires, these insects fly toward the flames, copulate among the embers, and lay eggs.

Read more at  Wildfire season: For fire beetles, climate change is no problem | Vox