What If Gone

Species → Dung Beetle

Dung Beetle

Digitonthophagus gazella

not evaluated by the IUCN; durably established at at least 12 studied…
Extinction risk Not Evaluated
Biological controlNutrient cyclingAgriculturalPublic health
Dung Beetle (Digitonthophagus gazella)
Photo: Judy Gallagher, Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

What if it disappeared?

Impact High
Before the program, Australia

Australia's native dung beetles, adapted to the fibrous droppings of marsupials, could not process the soft, abundant dung of cattle introduced by European settlers — a single unburied pat could hatch up to 3,000 flies within two weeks, on top of smothering the pasture underneath.

Documented
Detail

Bornemissza, G.F. (1976). The Australian dung beetle project 1965-1975. Australian Meat Research Committee Review, 1976, 1–30.

With more than 20 million cattle each producing about ten pats a day, the absence of a dung beetle able to process this kind of waste amounted to a country-wide functional gap — not the absence of one particular species, but of an entire guild adapted to this type of resource.

Over 20 years (Australia)

By introducing 55 dung beetle species from Africa, southern Europe, and Hawaii — with Digitonthophagus gazella among the very first to establish successfully — the Australian program is credited with roughly a 90% reduction in pasture fly populations.

Documented
Detail

Bornemissza (1976), même source — description directe du programme et de son résultat sur les mouches, reprise depuis par le CSIRO dans ses bilans du programme.

By burying dung within hours to a few days depending on the species, the introduced beetles removed the flies' egg-laying site before hatching, while returning the nitrogen and phosphate it contains to the soil rather than to nearby waterways.

50 years (Australia)

Far from a temporary fix, the introduced population has persisted and diversified: it now forms five genetically distinct groups, each adapted to its region's climate — evidence of a durable establishment rather than a one-off release.

Documented
Detail

Rapalai, B.L., Simmons, L.W., Evans, T.A. et Kennington, W.J. (2024). Genetic and Phenotypic Divergence in a Dung Beetle 50 Years After Its Introduction to Australia. Ecology and Evolution, 14(11).

Genetic analysis of 187 beetles across 12 Australian sites shows significant genetic divergence between climatic regions, with divergence in digging-leg shape even more pronounced than neutral genetic divergence — a sign of active ongoing selection, not just a population frozen in place since its introduction.

By extrapolation

British and American cattle farming draws an estimated several hundred million dollars a year in value from the dung beetles already present, mainly through reduced livestock parasites — suggesting that a decline in dung beetles elsewhere, notably from antiparasitic treatments given to cattle, would carry a cost comparable to what Australia experienced before 1968.

Extrapolated
Detail

Extrapolation à partir des estimations de valeur économique du Royaume-Uni et des États-Unis, combinées au cas historique australien, sans mesure directe d'un effondrement à l'échelle d'un pays ailleurs qu'en Australie avant introduction.

Several studies note that sustained use of antiparasitic drugs in cattle farming harms dung beetle assemblages by killing the larvae that develop in treated dung — a different mechanism from pre-1968 Australia (the absence of an adapted guild) but one that could produce a comparable outcome if the practice becomes widespread.

What's missing to confirm it: No study directly measures, at the scale of an entire country, the cost of a dung beetle collapse caused by antiparasitic drugs rather than a historical mismatch like Australia's.

Documentation

Last verified: August 14, 2026