Curculionidae

• Main Authors: Oberprieler, Rolf G., Marvaldi, Adriana E., Anderson, Robert S.
• Format: Other/Unknown Material
• Language: unknown
• Published: Zenodo 2007
• Subjects: Biodiversity; Taxonomy; Animalia; Arthropoda; Insecta; Coleoptera; Curculionidae; Arctic; Zimmerman
• Online Access: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5626096; http://treatment.plazi.org/id/0397878FFFB09928FF0ECAA464FFC57A

Curculionidae With about 4 600 genera and 51 0 0 0 described species, the family Curculionidae is an order of magnitude larger than any other in weevils and comprises in excess of 80% of all weevil species. Its stupendous species richness is a principal factor in the large size of the Phytophaga and in fact of all Coleoptera, thus in Haldane’s Inordinate Fondness for beetles. Curculionidae occur all over the world, from the arctic zone in the north to the subantarctic islands in the south, from beaches to mountain tops, from deserts to rainforests. They feed on virtually all plants, mainly angiosperms but also gymnosperms, pteridophytes, bryophytes and lichens and occasionally they even browse on algae and cyanobacteria. Unlike all other weevil families, curculionids also make extensive use of monocotyledons as hosts, the basal subfamilies Dryophthorinae and Brachycerinae being predominantly associated with them and several taxa of other subfamilies as well. It is therefore likely that monocotyledons constitute the ancestral hosts of Curculionidae and that they may have played a pivotal role in the diversification of the family (Marvaldi et al . 2002, Oberprieler 2004b). Curculionid larvae predominantly live an endophytic life inside all parts of plants, from underground roots to buds, flowers and seeds high in the canopy. However, several groups have also adopted a more ectophytic life, the larvae feeding exposed on leaves or in the soil on roots, and a few have evolved specialised life styles such as coprophagy (dung-feeding), myrmecophily and even predation. The classification of Curculionidae into natural subfamilies and tribes probably remains the largest outstanding problem in the higher classification of Coleoptera even half a century after Crowson (1955) wrote these words. A significant first step in addressing this problem was the identification of those taxa with plesiomorphic, pedotectal3 (Alonso-Zarazaga 2007) male genitalia by, mainly, Morimoto (1962), Kuschel (1971), Thompson (1992) and Zimmerman ...