Coleoptera
Creators: name: Caron, Edilson
name: Monné, Marcela L.
name: Ferreira, Vinicius S.
name: Costa, Cleide
name: Cupello, Mario
name: Aloquio, Sergio
name: Linzmeier, Adelita M.
name: Vaz-de-Mello, Fernando Z.
name: Leivas, Fernando W. T.
name: Souza-Gonçalves, Igor
name: Mermudes, José R. M.
name: Almeida, Lúcia M.
name: Moura, Luciano de A.
name: Ferreira Júnior, Nelson
name: Grossi, Paschoal C.
name: Vanin, Sergio A.
name: Ślipiński, Adam
name: Anichtchenko, Alexander
name: Newton, Alfred F.
name: Sampaio, Aline
name: Carelli, Allan
name: Puker, Anderson
name: Ferreira, André da S.
name: Fernandes, André S.
name: Roza, André S.
name: Cline, Andrew
name: Sampaio, Brunno H. L.
name: Clarkson, Bruno
name: Castro, Camila F. de
name: Bicho, Carla de L.
name: Benetti, César J.
name: Ribeiro-Costa, Cibele S.
name: Lopes-Andrade, Cristiano
name: Manfio, Daiara
name: Colpani, Daniara
name: Basílio, Daniel S.
name: Bená, Daniela de C.
name: Pollock, Darren A.
name: Souza, Diego de S.
name: Rodrigues, Diego F.
name: Chandler, Donald S.
name: Nascimento, Elynton A. do
name: Spiessberger, Erich L.
name: Agrain, Federico A.
name: Barbosa, Felipe F.
name: Shockley, Floyd
name: Nascimento, Francisco E. de L.
name: Biffi, Gabriel
name: Powell, Gareth S.
name: Morse, Geoffrey E.
name: Flores, Gustavo E.
name: Escalona, Hermes
name: Quintino, Hingrid Y. S.
name: Rainho, Hugo L.
name: Maddalena, Italo S. C. P.
name: Hájek, Jiří
name: McHugh, Joseph V.
name: Botero, Juan P.
name: Fuhrmann, Juares
name: Churata-Salcedo, Julissa M.
name: Vieira, Letícia M.
name: Silveira, Luiz F. L. da
name: Cruz, Luiza S. da
name: Sekerka, Lukás
name: Bologna, Marco A.
name: Bevilaqua, Marcus V. O.
name: Passos, Maria I.
name: Chamorro, Maria L.
name: Cherman, Mariana A.
name: Bento, Matheus
name: Gimmel, Matthew
name: Segura, Melissa O.
name: Ivie, Michael A.
name: Thomas, Michael C.
name: Monné, Miguel A.
name: Lord, Nathan
name: Hamada, Neusa
name: Degallier, Nicolas
name: Santos, Paula B. dos
name: Duarte, Paulo R. M.
name: Gnaspini, Pedro
name: Bulirsch, Petr
name: Regalin, Renato
name: Leschen, Richard A. B.
name: Constantin, Robert
name: Corrêa, Rodrigo C.
name: Gerstmeier, Roland
name: Rosa, Simone P.
name: Campos, Stéphanie V. N.
name: Peck, Stewart B.
name: Pacheco, Thaynara L.
name: Polizei, Thiago T. S.
name: McElrath, Thomas C.
name: Grzymala, Traci L.
name: Smith, Trevor R.
name: Costa-Silva, Vinicius da
name: Sandoval-Gómez, Vivian E.
name: Sousa, Wesley O. de
name: Tomaszewska, Wioletta
Publisher: name: Zenodo
Year: 2024
Subjects: Biodiversity
Taxonomy
Plantae
Tracheophyta
Magnoliopsida
Coleoptera

description: Our catalog
differs from Costa’s (2000) list in that we follow the updated classification recently established by Cai et al. (2022). The following changes have accordingly been made for the CTFB family-level classification: 1) all three families in Archostemata are included in Cupedoidea; 2) In Adephaga, Rhysodinae is now treated as a subfamily of Carabidae; 3) Scirtoidea now includes only Scirtidae, with Clambidae and Eucinetidae transferred to Clamboidea; 4) Nosodendridae is moved from Derodontoidea (now a junior synonym of Clamboidea) to Nosodendroidea; 5) Histeridae is moved from Hydrophiloidea to Histeroidea; 6) Rhadalidae is raised from subfamily status under Melyridae to full family; 7) Byrrhoidea includes just Byrrhidae, with 10 other families previously included in it now transferred to Dryopoidea (Elmidae, Dryopidae, Lutrochidae, Limnichidae, Heteroceridae, Psephenidae, Cneoglossidae, Ptilodactylidae, Chelonariidae and Callirhipidae); and 8) Cucujoidea now consists of seven families (Cryptophagidae, Silvanidae, Cucujidae, Cavognathidae, Passandridae, Phalacridae and Laemophloeidae), having Erotyloidea (with only Erotylidae) and Nitiduloidea (Sphindidae, Monotomidae, Kateretidae, Nitidulidae) removed from it. The three points which we differ from Cai et al. (2022), however, relate to the following taxa: 1) Cicindelinae remains a subfamily of Carabidae, following Gough et al. (2019), and not a distinct family; 2) Melolonthidae and Cetoniidae are treated as separate families from Scarabaeidae following Cherman and Morón (2014) instead of subfamilies of the latter; and 3) Lagrioididae is classified as a family following Lawrence et al. (2023) instead of an incertae sedis subfamily of Tenebrionoidea as interpreted by Cai et al. (2022). These different treatments adhere to more detailed and, sometimes, recent classificatory studies.
Continues
Continues
Continues
1 Including Rhysodinae, treated as Rhysodidae in Costa (2000); 2 Data by Leticia M Vieira on September 28, 2023; 3 Not listed in Costa (2000); 4 Including Scydmaeninae Leach, 1815 and Silphinae Latreille, 1806, treated as Scydmaenidae and Silphidae in Costa (2000); 5 Including Ceratocanthinae Martínez, 1968, treated as Ceratocanthidae in Costa (2000); 6Not listed in Costa (2000), treated as a subfamily of Scarabaeidae in Cai et al. (2022), and here adopted as a family following Cherman and Morón (2014); 7 Typo in the number of species in Costa (2000); 8 As Anobiidae Fleming, 1821 in Costa (2000); 9 Included in Melyridae in Costa (2000); 10 Including Languriinae Hope, 1840, treated as Languriidae in Costa (2000); 11 As Brachypteridae in Costa (2000); 12 Included in Cerylonidae in Costa (2000) and in Supplementary Material 1, family status following Jaloszy ń ski and Ś lipi ń ski (2022); 13 Not in Supplementary Material 1; 14 Including Colydiinae Billberg, 1820 and Monommatini Blanchard, 1845 (Bouchard et al. 2011), treated as Colydiidae and Monommatidae in Costa (2000); 15 Included in Anthicidae in Costa (2000) and in Supplementary Material 1, treated as an incertae sedis subfamily of Tenebrionidae in Cai et al. (2022), and family status following Lawrence et al. (2023); 16 Included in Cerambycidae in Costa (2000); 17 Cited erroneously as 4,351 in Costa (2000); 18-24 World’s genera and species percentages following: Fiká č ek et al. (2021), Yasuda and Yoshitomi (2022), Prokin and Strelnikova (2021), Short et al. (2023), Nunes et al. (2023), Jaloszy ń ski and Ś lipi ń ski (2022) and Lawrence et al. (2023); 25 Data by E. Caron on January 19, 2024.
Of the 235 families of Coleoptera (Cai et al. 2022, with Cicindelinae in Carabidae, and considering Cetoniidae, Melolonthidae, and Lagrioididae as families), 116 have so far been recorded from Brazil (Table 1). They belong to all the living suborders and superfamilies, but no family known exclusively from the fossil record has been found in the country. All fossil species so far described from Brazil belong to extant families. For example, in Staphylinidae, there are three fossil species recorded from Brazil: Caririderma pilosa Martins-Neto, 1990, Apticax solidus Schomann and Solodovnikov, 2012, and A. volans Schomann and Solodovnikov, 2012 (Supplementary Material 2). Passalidae has Protopassalus araripensis Santos et al., 2020, the oldest known passalid fossil (Santos et al. 2021), whereas Curculionoidea encompasses two fossil species from the Santana Formation, Preclarusbelus vanini Santos et al., 2007, in Nemonychidae, and Arariperhinus monnei Santos et al., 2011, in Curculionidae (Santos et al. 2007, 2011, Anderson et al. 2014, Caldara et al. 2014).
Costa (2000) listed 104 families for Brazil, 97 if based on the current classification (Table 1, notes 1, 4, 5, 10 and 14). Our numbers, therefore, record 12 (or 19) more families. This in part reflects a more “splitter” classification adopted here: Melolonthidae, Cetoniidae, Vesperidae and Disteniidae, for example, were all present on Costa’s list not as families, but as subfamilies. Others, however, are genuine additions: Clambidae was first recorded from the country by Casari and Ide (2012), whereas Jurasaidae was described as a new family endemic to Brazil only four years ago (Rosa et al. 2020).
A number of families are known to occur in the Neotropical region, but have so far failed to be collected in Brazil: Lepiceridae *, Sphaeriusidae * (= Microsporidae), Trachypachidae, Meruidae *, Synteliidae, Glaphyridae, Dascillidae *, Derodontidae, Protocucujidae, Hobartiidae, Smicripidae *, Ulodidae, Promecheilidae (= Perimylopidae), Pyrochroidae and Caridae (Costa 2000, Spangler and Steiner 2005). We expect, however, that the ones indicated by an asterisk (*) will eventually prove to be present in the country as they are known from neighboring areas (e.g., Meruidae) or their species inhabit warm tropical climates in other parts of the globe. The remaining families have rather restricted distributions and tend to live in temperate regions and may be true absentees (e.g., Caridae, which has been recorded in South America solely from Chile and southern Argentina).
Concerning the number of genera, Brazil currently counts 4,958 of them. In comparison with Costa (2000), there was an increase of nearly 30% (Table 1, note 17). The five most diverse families in the number of genera are Cerambycidae (1,056 genera), Curculionidae (737), Chrysomelidae (562), Staphylinidae (474) and Carabidae (226). Together, these five families represent 61% of the genera so far recorded from Brazil.
As for the species, Brazil currently records 35,699 of them. Compared with Costa (2000), the increase was in the same proportion as that observed for the genera, approximately 30% (Table 1). The list of the five most diverse families in number of species shares the same members as the one for the genera: Chrysomelidae (6,079 species), Curculionidae (5,904), Cerambycidae (4,366), Staphylinidae (2,829) and Carabidae (1,841). Following the latter closely, Melolonthidae (1,592) and Buprestidae (1,562 species) join the list of the seven families with over 1,500 species recorded from Brazil. These seven families encompass 67% of the Brazilian beetle fauna.
Only a small number of countries have had their beetle fauna recently counted and cataloged and our data show that the Brazilian fauna is the richest among them, both in terms of genera and species. For example, the Australian fauna accounted for 22,901 species in 3,265 genera, while New Zealand had 5,525 species in 1,094 genera, Chile 3,947 species in 1,196 genera and Peru with about 10,000 species (Klimaszewski and Watt 1997, Elgueta 2000, Yeates et al. 2003, Chaboo 2015, Bouchard et al. 2017). Our beetle fauna confirms Brazil’s status as a megadiverse country. Brazil harbors a beetle fauna that is actually roughly 40% higher than that listed for the entire North American continent, including Canada, the USA, and northern Mexico combined (Marske and Ivie 2003).
1 Data by Leticia M. Vieira on September 28, 2023.
And what about the world’s fauna? Brazil boasts approximately 9% of the described species and 17% of the genera (see Table 1). While estimating the entire beetle biodiversity of the country poses challenges, we can use a conservative approach by selecting a large and relatively well-inventoried group, Cerambycidae, as a proxy. This method suggests that our fauna may actually contribute up to 15% of the world’s beetle species. This estimation prompts the identification of families requiring taxonomic advancement to align with this potential global representation. Notably, families such as Carabidae (5% of the world’s species), Staphylinidae (5%), and Tenebrionidae (7%) emerge as candidates for further taxonomic attention.
The knowledge of the Brazilian fauna for certain groups has greatly improved since Costa (2000). For example, Hydraenidae shows a staggering 1,550% increase in the number of species, something also observed for Attelabidae (500%), Heteroceridae (300%), Ciidae (275%), Gyrinidae (250%), Limnichidae (217%) and Coccinellidae (139%). In stark contrast, none of the families of Archostemata and Myxophaga has received taxonomic attention, the same situation of a handful of Polyphaga families such as Glaresidae, Cneoglossidae, Chelonariidae (see note 7 in Table 1), Byrrhidae, Artematopodidae, Throscidae, Biphyllidae, Sphindidae, Kateretidae, Cucujidae, Discolomatidae, Corylophidae, Salpingidae and Scraptiidae. They may be promising groups for study.
Another challenge would be to explore genera with a large number of species (Table 2). Among the top-ten genera, Conotrachelus Dejean, 1835 (Curculionidae) is the richest, with 570 species in the country (Table 2, Fig. 1), followed by Agrilus Curtis, 1825 (Buprestidae), with 450 species, the latter representing about 30% of the diversity of its family in Brazil. Similarly, Chauliognathus Hentz, 1830 (Cantharidae), with 169 species, represents 37% of the Brazilian fauna of the family. The family Tenebrionidae has two genera on the top-ten list, Statira Saint-Fargeau and Audinet-Serville, 1828 and Strongylium Kirby, 1819, which together account for 26% of the family in Brazil. Chrysomelidae is also represented on the top-ten list by two genera, Chlamisus Rafinesque, 1815 and Platyphora Gistel, 1857, but their combined share in the family’s richness is not as significant, merely 6.5% of its species diversity. Other families making the list, each with one representative, are Carabidae (Agra Fabricius, 1801), Melolonthidae (Plectris Saint-Fargeau and Audinet-Serville, 1828), and Staphylinidae (Euconnus Thomson, 1859). Chelonariidae has a single genus of 112 species, Chelonarium Fabricius, 1801 (Table 1). Unfortunately, none of these genera has a taxonomic revision that clarifies their phylogenetic status, species limits, and distribution in Brazil.
Concerning the authors who have named species living in Brazil (Fig. 2), the French entomologist Maurice Pic (1866–1957) is the most productive, with 1,794 valid names in 36 families of beetles (Table 3). The list of the ten most productive authors is completed by another Frenchman, a Swede, a German, an American, two British, a Czech, and two Brazilians. Remarkably, two of these authors have over 1,000 valid names in a single family, the Czech Jan Karel Bechyné (1920–1973) in Chrysomelidae and the German Carl Fiedler (1864–1955) in Curculionidae. The two sole Brazilian authors on this list, Ubirajara Ribeiro Martins (1932–2015) and Maria Helena Mainieri Galileo (b. 1950), the only ones to provide names in the 21st century and the latter the only still living, were responsible for the description of hundreds of new species of Cerambycidae. A consequence of the fact that most of the prolific authors were foreigners is that the type specimens they established are usually held in overseas institutions, far from where taxonomic studies on the fauna are now mostly performed, in Brazil. The study of this material is becoming easier through image and data sharing by curators and travel funding. Despite being competitive, this funding enables taxonomists to travel globally.
In the inaugural work of modern zoological nomenclature, the Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus (1758) described 69 species that we now know to occur in the Brazilian territory, these belonging to 23 families. Around the 1820s, this number had grown to 1,000. A hundred years later, approximately half of the Brazilian beetle fauna had been described, totaling 18,000 species (Fig. 3). Over the last 30 years, the description of new species present in Brazil has increased by more than 25% per decade (Table 4). Currently, approximately 144 new species are described each year. If this trend continues, the next decade, 2022–2031, is expected to see an average of about 180 new species described per year, equating to a new Brazilian beetle discovery about every two days. These results show how much we still have to learn about the Brazilian beetle fauna, most evidently demonstrated by the description from material exclusively collected in the country of the most recently discovered living Coleoptera family, Jurasaidae (Rosa et al. 2020, Nunes et al. 2023).
*Some species-group names published with co-authors. 1 Constantin (1992); 2 Stål (1869); 3 Anonymous (1974); 4 Groll (2016b); 5 Galileo and Santos-Silva (2015); 6 Ferreira (2004); 7 Smetana and Herman (2001).
To continue improving our knowledge about the Brazilian beetle fauna, we must advance in taxonomic studies of all families. Particularly promising are families with substantial species numbers but whose described Brazilian fauna represents less than 10% of the world’s diversity (refer to Table 1), for this situation likely betrays an understudied taxonomy. Also worthy of close attention are those neglected groups showing low growth rates since Costa (2000), typically involving families with small-sized species (also noted by Navarrete-Heredia et al. 2022 for Mexico), as well as highly speciose genera (Table 2). Finally, it would likely pay to be alert to the potential presence of families that have not yet been recorded from Brazil, such as Meruidae, Sphaeriusidae, and others.
description: Published as part of Caron, Edilson, Monné, Marcela L., Ferreira, Vinicius S., Costa, Cleide, Cupello, Mario, Aloquio, Sergio, Linzmeier, Adelita M., Vaz-de-Mello, Fernando Z., Leivas, Fernando W. T., Souza-Gonçalves, Igor, Mermudes, José R. M., Almeida, Lúcia M., Moura, Luciano de A., Ferreira Júnior, Nelson, Grossi, Paschoal C., Vanin, Sergio A., Ślipiński, Adam, Anichtchenko, Alexander, Newton, Alfred F., Sampaio, Aline, Carelli, Allan, Puker, Anderson, Ferreira, André da S., Fernandes, André S., Roza, André S., Cline, Andrew, Sampaio, Brunno H. L., Clarkson, Bruno, Castro, Camila F. de, Bicho, Carla de L., Benetti, César J., Ribeiro-Costa, Cibele S., Lopes-Andrade, Cristiano, Manfio, Daiara, Colpani, Daniara, Basílio, Daniel S., Bená, Daniela de C., Pollock, Darren A., Souza, Diego de S., Rodrigues, Diego F., Chandler, Donald S., Nascimento, Elynton A. do, Spiessberger, Erich L., Agrain, Federico A., Barbosa, Felipe F., Shockley, Floyd, Nascimento, Francisco E. de L., Biffi, Gabriel, Powell, Gareth S., Morse, Geoffrey E., Flores, Gustavo E., Escalona, Hermes, Quintino, Hingrid Y. S., Rainho, Hugo L., Maddalena, Italo S. C. P., Hájek, Jiří, McHugh, Joseph V., Botero, Juan P., Fuhrmann, Juares, Churata-Salcedo, Julissa M., Vieira, Letícia M., Silveira, Luiz F. L. da, Cruz, Luiza S. da, Sekerka, Lukás, Bologna, Marco A., Bevilaqua, Marcus V. O., Passos, Maria I., Chamorro, Maria L., Cherman, Mariana A., Bento, Matheus, Gimmel, Matthew, Segura, Melissa O., Ivie, Michael A., Thomas, Michael C., Monné, Miguel A., Lord, Nathan, Hamada, Neusa, Degallier, Nicolas, Santos, Paula B. dos, Duarte, Paulo R. M., Gnaspini, Pedro, Bulirsch, Petr, Regalin, Renato, Leschen, Richard A. B., Constantin, Robert, Corrêa, Rodrigo C., Gerstmeier, Roland, Rosa, Simone P., Campos, Stéphanie V. N., Peck, Stewart B., Pacheco, Thaynara L., Polizei, Thiago T. S., McElrath, Thomas C., Grzymala, Traci L., Smith, Trevor R., Costa-Silva, Vinicius da, Sandoval-Gómez, Vivian E., Sousa, Wesley O. de & Tomaszewska, Wioletta, 2024, Coleoptera of Brazil: what we knew then and what we know now. Insights from the Catálogo Taxonômico da Fauna do Brasil, pp. 1-15 in Zoologia (e 23072) (e 23072) 41 on pages 2-11, DOI: 10.1590/S1984-4689.v41.e23072, http://zenodo.org/record/15174136