Why are there so many species of beetles?

Enlarge (credit score: Laurie Rubin by way of Getty)

Caroline Chaboo’s eyes gentle up when she talks about tortoise beetles. Like gems, they exist in myriad vibrant colours: shiny blue, purple, orange, leaf inexperienced and clear flecked with gold. They’re members of a gaggle of 40,000 species of leaf beetles, the Chrysomelidae, probably the most species-rich branches of the huge beetle order, Coleoptera. “You’ve your weevils, longhorns, and leaf beetles,” she says. “That’s actually the trio that dominates beetle range.”

An entomologist on the College of Nebraska, Lincoln, Chaboo has lengthy questioned why the dominion of life is so skewed towards beetles: The tough-bodied creatures make up a couple of quarter of all animal species. Many biologists have questioned the identical factor, for a very long time. “Darwin was a beetle collector,” Chaboo notes.

Regardless of their kaleidoscopic selection, most beetles share the identical three-part physique plan. The bugs’ skill to fold their flight wings, origami-like, below protecting forewings known as elytra permits beetles to squeeze into rocky crevices and burrow inside bushes. Beetles’ knack for thriving in a wide variety of microhabitats may additionally assist clarify their abundance of species, scientists say. (credit score: Bugboy52.40 (CC BY-SA 3.0) by way of Wikimedia Commons)

Of the roughly 1 million named insect species on Earth, about 400,000 are beetles. And that’s simply the beetles described up to now. Scientists sometimes describe hundreds of latest species annually. So—why so many beetle species? “We don’t know the exact reply,” says Chaboo. However clues are rising.