Bioluminescent_beetle_Elateroidea_-_animated

The Elateroidea are a large superfamily of

beetle Beetles are insects that form the Taxonomic rank, order Coleoptera (), in the superorder Holometabola. Their front pair of wings are hardened into wing-cases, elytra, distinguishing them from most other insects. The Coleoptera, with about 40 ...

s. It contains the familiar

click beetle Elateridae or click beetles (or "typical click beetles" to distinguish them from the related families Cerophytidae and Eucnemidae, which are also capable of clicking) are a family (biology), family of beetles. Other names include elaters, sna ...

fireflies The Lampyridae are a family of elateroid beetles with more than 2,000 described species, many of which are light-emitting. They are soft-bodied beetles commonly called fireflies, lightning bugs, or glowworms for their conspicuous production ...

, and soldier beetles and their relatives. It consists of about 25,000 species.

Description

Elateroidea is a morphologically diverse group, including hard-bodied beetles with 5 abdominal ventrites, soft-bodied beetles with 7-8 ventrites connected with membranes (formerly known as cantharoids), and beetles with intermediate forms. They have a range of sizes and colours, but in terms of shape, they are usually narrow and parallel-sided as adults. Many of the sclerotised elateroids ( Cerophytidae,

Eucnemidae Eucnemidae, or false click beetles, are a family of elateroid beetles based on the type genus '' Eucnemis''; they include about 1700 species, distributed worldwide. Description Closely related to the family Elateridae, specimens of Eucnemida ...

, Throscidae, Elateridae) have a clicking mechanism. This is a peg on the prothorax which fits into a cavity in the mesothorax. When a click beetle bends its body, the peg snaps into the cavity, causing the beetle's body to straighten so suddenly that it jumps into the air. Most beetles capable of

bioluminescence Bioluminescence is the emission of light during a chemiluminescence reaction by living organisms. Bioluminescence occurs in multifarious organisms ranging from marine vertebrates and invertebrates, as well as in some Fungus, fungi, microorgani ...

are in the Elateroidea, in the families Lampyridae (~2000 species), Phengodidae (~200 species), Rhagophthalmidae (100 species) and Elateridae (>100 species). Females in several lineages, including Lycidae, Lampyridae, Phengogidae and Rhagophthalmidae, do not pupate and remain in a larval form. This trait is estimated to have evolved independently at least three times within the superfamily. Some Elateroidea, including species of Cantharidae and Lycidae, have bright

aposematic Aposematism is the Advertising in biology, advertising by an animal, whether terrestrial or marine, to potential predation, predators that it is not worth attacking or eating. This unprofitability may consist of any defenses which make the pr ...

colours to signal to predators that they are poisonous and so should not be eaten.

Families

The validity and relationships of some families, such as Podabrocephalidae are not fully resolved. The family Rhinorhipidae has recently been removed to its own superfamily, with evidence that it is a basal taxon within Elateriformia dating to an Upper Triassic/Lower Jurassic split from other extant beetle lineages. * Artematopodidae Lacordaire, 1857 – soft-bodied plant beetles (= Eurypogonidae) * Brachypsectridae Leconte & Horn, 1883 – Texas beetles *

Cantharidae The soldier beetles (Cantharidae) are relatively soft-bodied, straight-sided beetles. They are Cosmopolitan distribution, cosmopolitan in distribution. One of the first described species has a color pattern reminiscent of the Red coat (Bri ...

Imhoff, 1856 – soldier beetles * Cerophytidae Latreille, 1834 – rare click beetles * Elateridae Leach, 1815 – click beetles (including Ampedidae, Balgidae, Dicronychidae, Drilidae, Lissomidae, Plastoceridae, Prosternidae, Protelateridae, Pyrophoridae, Synaptidae) *

Eschscholtz, 1829 – false click beetles (including Anischiidae and Perothopidae) * Iberobaeniidae Bocak ''et al.'', 2016 * Jurasaidae Rosa, Costa, Klamp & Kundrata, 2020 * Lycidae – net-winged beetles * Omethidae LeConte, 1861 – false firefly beetles (including Telegeusidae) * Throscidae Laporte, 1840 – false metallic wood-boring beetles (= Trixagidae) * †

Mysteriomorphidae ''Mysteriomorphus'' is an extinct genus of beetle, and the only member of the family Mysteriomorphidae. It is known from one described species, ''Mysteriomorphus pelevini'' found in Burmese amber, dating to the early part of the Cenomanian stage ...

Alekseev and Ellenberger, 2019 (Cretaceous) * Lampyroid clade ** † Cretophengodidae Li, Kundrata, Tihelka & Cai, 2021 (Cretaceous) ** Lampyridae Latreille, 1817 – glow-worms and firefly beetles ** Phengodidae LeConte 1861 – American glowworm beetles (including Cydistinae) ** Rhagophthalmidae Olivier, 1907 ** Sinopyrophoridae Bi & Li, 2019 (monotypic) *''Incertae sedis'': **†'' Anoeuma'' Li, Kundrata & Cai, 2022 (Cretaceous)

Phylogeny

Some morphological and molecular phylogenetic analyses find that Byrrhoidea is either a monophyletic or paraphyletic group closely related to Elateroidea. Based on Kusy et al. 2018 and 2020

References

External links

Tree of Life - Elateroidea
{{DEFAULTSORT:Elateroidea Beetle superfamilies