Many beetles excavate chambers underground to store and protect the resource and the larvae developing within it from predators and desiccation. Below I list several examples. Cryptocercus roaches pair for life. The adults chew a series of galleries interspersed with large rearing chambers in rotting logs. Passalid beetles are also monogamous, and cooperate in construction and defense of interconnected galleries in rotting wood.
Colonies generally have overlapping generations and cooperative brood care.
Colonizing adults share galleries with offspring in all stages of development, and with first generation nonreproductive adults. Complex cooperation between the sexes, with division of labor, occurs in many species of scarabaeine dung beetles. Females in the genus Copris and many Ontophagus species dig tunnels and brood chambers under dung, pushing dirt up to males higher in the tunnel, who in turn push it out. When excavation is complete, males transfer dung from the surface to the female in the tunnel and she constructs the brood ball. The female excavates the brood chamber while the male stands guard at the entrance.