Differentiation in Searching Behavior for Carcasses Based on Flight Height Differences in Carrion Beetles (Coleoptera: Silphidae) Hiroshi Ikeda & Satoshi Shimano & Akira Yamagami Revised: 17 September 2010 / Accepted: 13 October 2010 / Published online: 4 November 2010 # Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2010 Abstract Flight ability allows insects to search for food and locate oviposition sites across a wide range of environments and, thus, allows insects to locate scarce and patchy resources such as carcasses. We examined differentiation in searching for carcasses, based on capture height differences in carrion beetles, and found that capture height differed among species. For Nicrophorus quadripunctatus and Oiceoptoma nigropunctatum, the height of abundance peaks differed among sites and was related to species composition at each site, indicating that shifts in flight height can occur plastically, whereas those for Nicrophorus maculifrons and Nicrophorus investigator did not differ among sites, indicating that the flight heights of these species are largely genetically determined. Thus, the present differentiation in capture height is primarily determined by current plastic shifts and on some genetic basis. Keywords Necrophagous . Nicrophorus . plasticity Introduction Flight allows insects to disperse over long distances and to search for food, partners and oviposition sites across a wide range of environments. Previous studies have J Insect Behav (2011) 24:167–174 DOI 10.1007/s10905-010-9245-5 H. Ikeda (*) Department of Forest Entomology, Forestry and Forest Products Research Institute, 1 Matsunosato Tsukuba, Ibaraki 305-8687, Japan e-mail: hiroshiikeda@affrc.go.jp S. Shimano Environmental Education Center, Miyagi University of Education, 149 Aramaki, Aoba, Sendai city, Miyagi 980-0845, Japan A. Yamagami Liberal Arts Education Center, Tokai University, 1117 Kitakaname, Hiratsuka city, Kanagawa 259-1292, Japan