The Archostemata are the smallest

suborder Order ( la, ordo) is one of the eight major hierarchical taxonomic ranks in Linnaean taxonomy. It is classified between family and class. In biological classification, the order is a taxonomic rank used in the classification of organisms and ...

beetle Beetles are insects that form the order Coleoptera (), in the superorder Endopterygota. Their front pair of wings are hardened into wing-cases, elytra, distinguishing them from most other insects. The Coleoptera, with about 400,000 describ ...

s, consisting 45 living species in five families. They are an ancient lineage with a number of primitive characteristics. Antennae may be thread-shaped (filiform) or like a string of beads (moniliform). This suborder also contains the only beetles where both sexes are paedogenic, ''

Micromalthus debilis The telephone-pole beetle (''Micromalthus debilis'') is a beetle native to the eastern United States, and the only living representative of the otherwise extinct family Micromalthidae. They have an unusual lifecycle involving asexually reproducin ...

''. Modern archostematan beetles are considered rare, but were more diverse during the

Mesozoic The Mesozoic Era ( ), also called the Age of Reptiles, the Age of Conifers, and colloquially as the Age of the Dinosaurs is the second-to-last era of Earth's geological history, lasting from about , comprising the Triassic, Jurassic and Cretaceo ...

. The term "Archostemata" is used more broadly by some authors to include both modern archostematans as well as

stem-group In phylogenetics, the crown group or crown assemblage is a collection of species composed of the living representatives of the collection, the most recent common ancestor of the collection, and all descendants of the most recent common ancestor. ...

beetles like " protocoleopterans", which some modern archostematans closely resemble to due to their

plesiomorphic In phylogenetics, a plesiomorphy ("near form") and symplesiomorphy are synonyms for an ancestral character shared by all members of a clade, which does not distinguish the clade from other clades. Plesiomorphy, symplesiomorphy, apomorphy, and ...

morphology. Genetic research suggests that modern archostematans are a

monophyletic In cladistics for a group of organisms, monophyly is the condition of being a clade—that is, a group of taxa composed only of a common ancestor (or more precisely an ancestral population) and all of its lineal descendants. Monophyletic gro ...

group. Some genetic studies have recovered archostematans as the sister group of

Myxophaga Myxophaga is the second-smallest suborder of the Coleoptera after Archostemata, consisting of roughly 65 species of small to minute beetles in four families. The members of this suborder are aquatic and semiaquatic, and feed on algae. Descrip ...

Taxonomy

There are five extant families. * Family Crowsoniellidae Iablokoff-Khnzorian, 1983 * Family

Cupedidae The Cupedidae are a small family of beetles, notable for the square pattern of "windows" on their elytra (hard forewings), which give the family their common name of reticulated beetles. The family consists of about 30 species in 9 genera, with ...

Laporte, 1838 * Family Micromalthidae Barber, 1913 * Family

Ommatidae The Ommatidae are a family of beetles in the suborder Archostemata. The Ommatidae are considered the extant beetle family that has most ancestral characteristics. There are only seven extant species, confined to Australia and South America. How ...

Sharp and Muir, 1912 * Family Jurodidae Ponomarenko, 1985

References

External links

Tree of Life - Archostemata
{{DEFAULTSORT:Archostemata Insect suborders Extant Permian first appearances Taxa named by Hermann Julius Kolbe

Taxonomy

See also

References

External links