Phytophaga is a clade of beetles within the infraorder

Cucujiformia Cucujiformia is an infraorder of polyphagan beetles, representing most plant-eating beetles. The infraorder contains the seven superfamilies: * Chrysomeloidea (~7 families including longhorn beetles and leaf beetles) * Cleroidea (checkered bee ...

consisting of the superfamilies

Chrysomeloidea The Chrysomeloidea are an enormous superfamily of beetles, with tens of thousands of species. The largest families are Cerambycidae, long-horned beetles, with more than 35,000 species, and Chrysomelidae, leaf beetles, with more than 13,000 specie ...

and

Curculionoidea Weevils are beetles belonging to the superfamily Curculionoidea, known for their elongated snouts. They are usually small, less than in length, and herbivorous. Approximately 97,000 species of weevils are known. They belong to several families, ...

that are distinctive in the plant-feeding habit combined with the tarsi being pseudotetramerous or cryptopentamerous, where the fourth tarsal segment is typically greatly reduced or hidden by the third tarsal segment. The

Cucujoidea Cucujoidea is a superfamily of beetles. This group formerly included all of the families now included in the superfamily Coccinelloidea. They include some fungus beetles and a diversity of lineages of "bark beetles" unrelated to the "true" bark be ...

are a sister to the Phytophaga. In some older literature the term Phytophaga was applied only to the Chrysomeloidea. The diversification of species within the Phytophaga is thought to be associated with the speciation within the Angiosperms. The plant-feeding habit may have been a shift from microfungal, spore-feeding (on strobili and cycads) and saprotrophic habits. With nearly 125,000 described species they are the second largest phytophagous lineage of insects after the order Lepidoptera. GH45s are only encoded by the genomes possessed by the Phytophaga beetles. The derived G45s from Phytophaga degrade 3 main substances: amorphous cellulose, xyloglucan and glucomannan. It was also composed of fungal sequences, acquired by gene transfer from fungi.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Phytophaga Insect infraorders Cucujiformia