Overview
Adults and larvae feed in dry animal remains, being one of the last in the succession of insects that invade carcasses. Larvae live in vertical burrows in the soil beneath the carcass. Adults stridulate by rubbing a plectrum on the penultimate abdominal segment against against a file along the internal margins of the elytra.
Description
Robust, heavily sclerotised, dull and uniformly dark beetles, with tuberculate upper surface, strongly deflexed head and broadly closed mid coxal cavities. Larvae differ from those of other scarabaeoids in having a darkly pigmented head with stemmata, 3 antennal segments and abdominal terga with transverse folds and stiff spines.
Distribution
The group appears to flourish in the more arid parts of Australia; except for the introduced Holarctic
Trox scaber
, all Australian species belong to the genus
Omorgus
. [Scholtz 1986a, b.]