Can beetles breed without food?

[orma]

Hi, 


Can adult beetles breed without having food?
I have found about a dozen in my house, probably carpet beetles, over the last ten days, with some holes in my clothes, but there is no food for them inside (no flowers) and I wonder if they need some food to breed.
Is it normal I found a few of them each day and not all of them at the same time? It is because they didn't hatch at the same time right? 

I have read some peoples complaining about carpet beetles infestations, but those cases happen because the beetles go outside to feed and inside to breed right? If there is no path for them which connects the outside and the inside there can be no infestation right? (in the case where there is no flower in the house)

I also wonder how the beetles are likely to go back to where they were born to breed, especially if there is no apparent nest around. 


Thanks for your answers!

[Adam Cotton]

I am not a Coleopterist, but I don't think that they need to go outside to feed on flowers and come back inside to infest clothes, carpets etc. Perhaps you are confusing 'flower' with 'flour'. There are species of beetles known as flour beetles that live in flour or grain. These can happily infest a sealed box and multiply in large numbers without ever leaving the box or needing to eat or drink anything else.

Adam.

[bobw]

They're called carpet beetles because they can happily live their entire lives in carpets, feeding on any detritus that happens to be in the carpet.  However, their preferred food is definitely insect collections!

[orma]

Well, bad news then!

Thanks for your answers!

But Wikipedia disagrees with you:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Varied_carpet_beetle#Diet_and_behaviour

"Larvae feed on keratin and chitin of natural fibers (dead insects, animal hair and feathers) throughout their development, eventually experiencing a dormancy period (also known as diapause) prior to pupation into the adult stage. The length of the dormancy appears to depend on environmental factors, with the most likely zeitgeber being photoperiod. Adults feed on the pollen and nectar of flowering plants."
So maybe it is different than the floor beetles. 

The insects I find looks like that, so I believe they are carpet beetles: 
ibb.co/DD9bn5y
ibb.co/1KbNpQh
ibb.co/3zzhTw3

I still hope it is just the product of one egg-laying. 

[orma]

Hello everyone   ,

I already responded to you one year ago but reading this thread again I want to add some precisions to complete my precedent response.

I was not confusing with floor beetles.
I meant I read this on Wikipedia: "Adults (imago) feed on the pollen and nectar of flowering plants".

And I wondered if adults (imago) could procreate without feeding on these plants but I've read somewhere that yes, they can.. 

I mean there was like a Mother Nature's logic to me, if the adults are not able to feed nowhere, they are "useless" (in Mother Nature’s plan) and so they shouldn’t be able to procreate but actually there can be indeed some food for their larvae who have a different diet.
So all the adults would do here is procreating, they would not eat anything and would not have any role in nature.

I don’t know if adult floor beetles have a common diet with their larvae.

I wonder if in the insect’s world larvae tend to have the same diet than the adults or not. 
And I also wonder if it is common than the adult does not have to eat food to procreate (in the insect's world)

If someone could enlighten me on these subjects, I’d be thankfull