Brilliant Beetles!

Here are some big numbers for you; 1,400,000 species of animals have been described so far and that is still rising. 800,000 of those are insects. That is a huge number of amazing variations of life - we are not including archnids (spiders), mirapods (millipedes), gastropods (snails) etc here either! I think everyone who likes invertebrates has a favourite order. (When classifying organisms they are broken down in groups until a single species is identified. 'Order' is a taxonomic rank, in our case this is at the point where we are listed as 'Primates'). The great thing is that there are simply so many orders to choose from! My absolute favourite is the Coleoptera order. This order embraces all the beetles. http://www.amentsoc.org/insects/fact-files/orders/coleoptera.html  Coleoptera actually means 'sheathed wing' in Greek which is a pretty accurate description as beetles have an elytra. This is a hard body casing that has evolved from their front pair of wings and now protects their single set of wings underneath. (Not all beetles have wings and not all beetles can fly though just to add a bit of spice). Us humans have had a thing about beetles for a long time. The Egyptians worshiped the Scarab beetle, the Vietnamese win or loose money betting on fighting beetles, over a third of the world eat beetle larvae and in Mexico they even stick gem stones on them and wear them as living jewellery. We know for sure that they were around in the Lower Permian period, a mere 299,000,000 years ago. As more fossils come to light, they might be even older. We also know that the first flowers were around at this time. Simple flowers such as the Magnolias we still have with us today. Bees, butterflies and moths had not evolved yet so guess who was doing the pollinating? Yes it was the beetles and some of them are still extremely important pollinators today. It is pure favoritism I will admit, but there is no getting away from it - beetles are quite simply brilliant!!

                                      What an fantastic mix of shapes and colours
                                                               - something for everyone!