Coleoptera (beetles)

Fast facts about Coleoptera (beetles)

• Over 370,000 species described to date (12,500 in Europe, 4000 in UK), and the back rooms of museums are full of more new species. So if you want to be remembered fund taxonomy and have a beetle named after you! 3485 new species were described in 2011. There are more beetle species than all the vascular plants, and six times the number of vertebrates. In fact there are almost as many described species of beetle as there are of all other insects, plants and animals added together! For what this implies to the religious amongst us see the quote from J. B. S. Haldane below.
• They are found in every habitat except salt water and polar ice caps.
• The order Coleoptera is divided into around 170 different families.
• They are holometabolous, i.e. they undergo complete metamorphosis with a distinct larval, pupal and adult stage. With the principal feeding as a larva, and the sexually mature stage as an adult. So every adult beetle you see was once an egg, a larva, a pupa, and finally the adult beetle.
• Adults range in length from 0.25 - 200.00 mm, and up to 75.00 mm in width.
• Most have two pairs of wings, with the front pair (elytra) forming a hard, protective covering over the rear membranous flight wings.
• They have biting mouthparts.
• Glowworms are not worms, but beetles belonging to the family Lampyridae.
• When attacked or handled roughly they can reflex bleed a brown fluid which tastes bad, causing some predators to drop them.
• The first beetles were around in the Permian.