Dung Beetles Galore!: The East Asia Dung Beetle Research Symposium 2025

In July 2025, PhD student Zann Teo Jiexin represented the TEE Lab at the East Asian Dung Beetle Research Symposium 2025 as an invited speaker. This year’s symposium focused on Current Status and Issues in Dung Beetle Research and took place at Nara Women’s University in Nara, Japan on 23-24 July 2025.

Let's hear about her experience!

In July this year, I had the privilege to share about my work on Singapore’s dung beetle species checklist and morphological key, particularly on its progress and current challenges and issues, in a presentation titled: A species checklist of dung beetles in Singapore: Progress & Challenges.

Zann giving an oral presentation on her work on creating a species checklist of dung beetles in Singapore. Image from the organizing team, Mr Jin.

Her presentation inspired questions about the species that occur in Singapore and about future steps and applications of the checklist. Image from the organizing team, Mr Jin.

The conference was attended by dung beetle lovers from all over East Asia, but also featured keynote speakers Dr Camila Leandro Rivel from the University of Montpellier, and Dr Shantanu P. Shukla from the Indian Institute of Science.

Poster of the East Asia Dung Beetle Research Symposium 2025.

The symposium highlighted the boundless opportunities in studying dung beetles – from conservation and ecology, population genetics and geographic colour divergences, and even the symbiotic relationships with nematodes. It was a great opportunity to learn about various different fields of research on dung beetles, and also share about different methodologies! I was particularly interested to hear about the different ways that dung beetles were reared by different research groups.

Dung beetle lovers from all around East Asia and the world! Image from the organizing team, Mr Jin.

The day after the symposium, the organizers also brought us out on a field trip to Nara Deer Park, where we were given plastic cups and wooden chopsticks to dig through deer poop to find dung beetles!

Zann standing next to a crowd of deer, as she searches for dung beetles, equipped with chopsticks!

Fellow dung beetle enthusiasts giving identifications with handy field guides.

Lastly, we ended the symposium with a visit to the Naramachi Dung Beetle Museum, a small gallery where we saw collections of dung beetles from all around Japan – and lots of the beautiful and iconic Phelotrupes auratus specimens! (Which I regrettably forgot to take any pictures of…)

Creative displays in the Naramachi Dung Beetle Museum.

I'm jealous of these large and shiny beetles from Japan!

I thank the organizers, Ryo Akashi (Hokkaido University) and Suk Young Hong (Seoul National University) for inviting me to share about my work and get to know so many fellow dung beetle enthusiasts in one place!