Stag beetles, or Lucanidae (Insecta: Coleoptera: Scarabaeoidea), are among the most charismatic groups of scarab beetles. However, their ecology and natural history largely unknown, partly due to rarity in field biological collections. This contribution summarizes status knowledge Colombian Lucanidae, based for part bibliographic research personal observations from fieldwork collections Colombi...

The evolution of flight is a key innovation that may enable the extreme diversification of insects. Nonetheless, many species-rich, winged insect groups contain flightless lineages. The loss of flight may promote allopatric differentiation due to limited dispersal power and may result in a high speciation rate in the flightless lineage. Here we show that loss of flight accelerates allopatric sp...

Bark beetles (Coleoptera, Scolytinae) carry a diverse filamentous fungal community sometimes acting as vectors or carriers of phytopathogens. In this study, mycobiota carried by two Tomicus species (Tomicus piniperda and Tomicus destruens) were investigated through (i) morphological and molecular identification of taxa; (ii) taxonomic richness, diversity, evenness, dominance and phoresy indices...

The questions of how the indirect interactions mediated by herbivore-induced plant responses influence trait evolution of herbivores have been poorly investigated. We previously demonstrated that allopatric populations of the willow leaf beetle, Plagiodera versicolora (Coleoptera: Chrysomelidae) could evolutionarily develop divergent preference, according to locally distinct intensity of induce...

Colonization of potato (Solanum tuberosum [L.]) Þelds by Colorado potato beetle, Leptinotarsa decemlineata (Say) (Coleoptera: Chrysomelidae), has often been recognized as a process that initially results in an edge-biased spatial pattern. We modeled this spatial process by measuring distance of immigration for individual overwintered adults.Distancewasmeasured to the nearest Þeld edge or to the...

The six extant aquatic families of Hydradephaga (Coleoptera) known so far represent a diverse group of beetles morphologically highly modified for life in the water. We report the discovery of a new genus with two species from South Africa and China, which differ greatly from all extant families, but resemble the Jurassic-Cretaceous dagger Liadytidae (the dagger symbol indicates that the taxa a...

The attachment function of tibial spurs and pretarsal claws in the beetle Pachnoda marginata (Coleoptera, Scarabaeidae) during locomotion was examined in this study. First, we measured the angle, at which the beetles detached from substrates with different roughness. At a surface roughness of 12 μm and higher, intact animals were able to cling to a completely tilted platform (180°). Second, we ...

Click beetles (Coleoptera: Elateridae) represent one of the largest groups of beetle insects. Some click beetles in larval form, known as wireworms, are destructive agricultural pests. Morphological identification of click beetles is generally difficult and requires taxonomic expertise. This study reports on the DNA barcoding of Japanese click beetles to enable their rapid and accurate identifi...

Wolbachia (Alphaproteobacteria) is an inherited endosymbiont of arthropods and filarial nematodes and was reported to be widespread across insect taxa. While Wolbachia's effects on host biology are not understood from most of these hosts, known Wolbachia-induced phenotypes cover a spectrum from obligate beneficial mutualism to reproductive manipulations and pathogenicity. Interestingly, data on...

This paper focuses on biological relationships between mammalian species richness and the community structure of dung beetles in cool-temperate forests in the northernmost part of mainland Japan. The composition of beetle assemblages was evaluated at 3 sites in undisturbed beech forests with different mammalian fauna. In spring and summer 2009, beetles were collected at each site using pitfall ...