Coleoptera Linnaeus, 1758

Most beetles communicate with other beetles with chemicals. Males often locate females by their scent. Beetles usually can't see very well. Some beetle make sounds, usually scraping their mouthparts together or rubbing their legs on their bodies. Some beetles that live in dead wood drum and make vibrations. "Fireflies' and "lightning bugs' are actually beetles. They glow in the dark to communicate.

The Coleoptera, or beetles, includes many commonly encountered insects such as ladybird beetles (family Coccinellidae), click beetles (Elateridae), scarabs (Scarabaeidae), and fireflies (Lampyridae). They live throughout the world (except Antarctica), but are most speciose in the tropics.

The oldest beetle fossils are from the Lower Permian (about 265 million years old; Ponomarenko, 1995); since then the group has diversified into many different forms. They range in size from minute featherwing beetles (Ptiliidae), adults of which are as small as 0.3 mm long, to the giant Goliath and Hercules beetles (Scarabaeidae), which can be well over 15 cm. While most species are phytophagous, many are predacious, or fungivores, or are parasitoids. They communicate to one another in many ways, either by use of chemicals (e.g. pheromones), sounds (e.g. stridulation), or by visual means (e.g. fireflies). They live in rainforest canopies, the driest deserts, in lakes, and above treeline on mountains.

In one sense the most unusual property of beetles is not some aspect of their structure or natural history, but their sheer number. There are more known species of Coleoptera than any other group of organisms, with over 350,000 described species. Perhaps the most famous quote about beetles comes from the great population geneticist J.B.S. Haldane, who was asked what might be learned about a Creator by examining the world. His response: "an inordinate fondness for beetles" (Fisher, 1988).

Some beetle species are important predators of pests, and others do valuable clean-up jobs, getting rid of dung and breaking down dead plants. A few species are now being used to eat problem weed plants as well.

Positive Impacts: controls pest population

Early beetles appear to have been among the primary visitors of primitive flowering plants. An improvement over wind pollination, beetles likely played an important role in the evolution of flowering plants.

Many familiar North American plants are pollinated by beetles. For example, plants in the magnolia family, including the eight species that are native to the United States, have flowers that are specialized for beetle pollination. In fact, though magnolia flowers are often described as "primitive" (relatively unchanged from the ancestral type), some researchers have suggested that magnolia flowers are actually quite specialized and have evolved to promote nearly exclusive pollination by beetles. The beetles appear to be attracted by the odor of the flowers - which is sometimes described as unpleasant - as well as their color. They feed on nectar, stigmas, pollen, and secretions of the petals. Other insects appear to be unable to access magnolia flowers at critical times, while stigmas are mature or while pollen is shed. At least some magnolia species, including one species in Mexico, produce heat.

Odor, often foul or unpleasant, is thought to act as a primary attractant for many beetle and fly pollinators. Beetle-pollinated plants additionally produce heat. The odor may mimic a food source; the heat is thought to help spread the odor and/or provide a direct energetic benefit to pollinating insects