Introduction and Objectives of the Scarabaeoid Identification Guide

The growing demand for knowledge of biodiversity around the world has heightened the significance of systematics information. Electronic dissemination of data provides the ability to access information as never before. The objective of this web site is to provide a comprehensive systematic overview for the approximately 600 genera of New World scarab beetles and to provide a foundation for a future comprehensive treatment of world scarabaeoids. This on-line guide to the New World scarab genera brings together decades of literature and keys that are written in many languages and are often inaccessible.

This work is a scientific publication and should be PROPERLY ACKNOWLEDGED. This project was initiated as part of a National Science Foundation PEET grant to Ratcliffe and Jameson that is currently in progress. The guide will ultimately allow identification of approximately 600 genera (many of which are currently unidentifiable). The identification guide will consist of keys to taxa in English and Spanish and will be supported with images such as habitus illustrations, characters, distribution maps, and cladograms. The guide will be linked to a database of genera that will include lists of species as well as data on ecology, agricultural information, morphological studies, larval information, host plant data, phylogeny, and references. The guide and database will be useful for people engaged in agriculture, habitat surveys, conservation studies, biodiversity research, collection management, evolutionary studies, taxonomy, and comparative biology.

It is our hope that the electronic version of this identification guide will form the foundation for keys to all world Scarabaeoidea, and it will ultimately involve the collaboration of specialists and participants from around the world. In addition, it is our hope that a natural extension of this project will be a guide to all known scarabaeoid larvae.

The classification that we are using follows that of Lawrence and Newton (1995). Not included in our treatment are taxa that are exclusively Old World in distribution: Belohinidae and the subfamilies Pachypodinae, Dynamopodinae, Euchirinae, Phaenomeridinae (all in the family Scarabaeidae). The Taxa Map displays all scarab taxa currently in the site.

This web site is made possible by the contributions and support of many people. Team Scarab thanks the generous contributions of our collaborators, and we are hopeful that additional scarab workers will contribute to this web site. We are grateful for the contributions of several scientific illustrators who have helped to make this site more appealing and useful: Angie Fox (University of Nebraska), Mark Marcuson (Lincoln, Nebraska), Dan Schmidt (Schuyler, Nebraska). Aura Paucar-Cabrera (University of Nebraska) designs and upgrades this website. This research was funded by a National Science Foundation PEET grant.


Scarabaeoidea of the New World (Caribbean, North, Central, and South America)

References Cited
LAWRENCE, J. F. and A. F. NEWTON. 1995. Families and subfamilies of Coleoptera (with selected genera, notes, references and data on family-group names), pp. 779-1006. In J. Pakaluk and S. A. Slipinski (eds.), Biology, Phylogeny, and Classification of Coleoptera. Papers Celebrating the 80th Birthday of Roy A. Crowson. Muzeum i Instytut Zoologii PAN, Warszawa. 1,092 pp.