Beetle

Beetles
Colorado beetle, Leptinotarsa decemlineata
Scientific classification
Kingdom:	Animalia
Phylum:	Arthropoda
Class:	Insecta
Subclass:	Pterygota
Infraclass:	Neoptera
Superorder:	Endopterygota
Order:	Coleoptera Linnaeus, 1758
Suborders
Adephaga Archostemata Myxophaga Polyphaga † Protocoleoptera

Beetles, the order Coleoptera, are the largest group of insects. There are 350,000 different species of beetles which have been named: about 40% of all known insects.^[1] There are an estimated 800,000 to a million living species.^[2] Beetles live almost everywhere, though not in the ocean or in places that are very cold, such as Antarctica.^[3]

Beetles went through a massive adaptive radiation early in their evolutionary history. The evolution of flowering plants helped drive the diversification of beetles.^[4] Four of the six biggest families of beetles mainly eat flowering plants.

1. ↑ Hammond P.M. 1992. Species inventory. pp. 17–39 in Global biodiversity, status of the Earth’s living resources. Groombridge B. (ed) Chapman and Hall, London.
2. ↑ Arthur D. Chapman (2009). Numbers of living species in Australia and the world (PDF) (2nd ed.). Department of the Environment, Water, Heritage and the Arts. ISBN 978-0-642-56861-8. Archived (PDF) from the original on 2009-10-07. Retrieved 2011-12-07.
3. ↑ Gullan P.J. & P.S. Cranston (2010). The Insects: an outline of entomology (4 ed.). Oxford: Wiley. ISBN 978-1-444-33036-6.
4. ↑ Grimaldi, David & Michael S. Engel 2005. Evolution of the insects. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-82149-5