Elateroidea
The Elateroidea are a large superfamily of beetles. It contains the familiar click beetles, fireflies, and soldier beetles and their relatives.
| Elateroidea | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Denticollis linearis, a click beetle | |
Scientific classification  | |
| Kingdom: | Animalia |
| Phylum: | Arthropoda |
| Class: | Insecta |
| Order: | Coleoptera |
| Suborder: | Polyphaga |
| Infraorder: | Elateriformia |
| Superfamily: | Elateroidea Leach, 1815 |
| Families | |
|
About 15-20, see text | |
Certain clusters of families within the superfamily are more strongly related to one another; for example, the Elateridae have close ties to the Cerophytidae, Eucnemidae, and Throscidae, and some of these beetles can also "click".
Likewise, the Lampyridae are most closely related to the Phengodidae and Rhagophthalmidae; most members of these families are also bioluminescent, at least as larvae. This group of families also includes many taxa whose females are larviform, though this is also known from a few other families in the superfamily.
The validity and relationships of some families, such as Podabrocephalidae, and Rhinorhipidae, are not fully resolved.
Some recent morphological and molecular phylogenetic analyses find that Byrrhoidea is either a monophyletic or paraphyletic group closely related to Elateroidea.[1]
Families
- Artematopodidae Lacordaire, 1857 – soft-bodied plant beetles (= Eurypogonidae)
- Brachypsectridae Leconte & Horn, 1883 – Texas beetles
- Cantharidae – soldier beetles
- Cerophytidae – rare click beetles
- Elateridae – click beetles (including Ampedidae, Balgidae, Dicronychidae, Drilidae, Lissomidae, Plastoceridae, Prosternidae, Protelateridae, Pyrophoridae, Synaptidae)
- Eucnemidae Eschscholtz, 1829 – false click beetles (including Anischiidae and Perothopidae)
- Jurasaidae
- Lampyridae – firefly beetles
- Lycidae – net-winged beetles
- Omethidae LeConte, 1861 – false firefly beetles (including Telegeusidae)
- Phengodidae LeConte 1861 – glowworm beetles (including Cydistinae[2])
- Podabrocephalidae Pic, 1930
- Rhagophthalmidae (sometimes in Phengodidae, might belong in Lampyridae)
- Rhinorhipidae Lawrence, 1988
- Throscidae Laporte, 1840 – false metallic wood-boring beetles (= Trixagidae)
References
- Beutel, R. G. (1995). "Phylogenetic analysis of Elateriformia (Coleoptera: Polyphaga) based on larval characters". Journal of Zoological Systematics and Evolutionary Research. 33 (3–4): 145–171. doi:10.1111/j.1439-0469.1995.tb00969.x. ISSN 1439-0469.
- Kundrata, Robin; Blank, Stephan M; Prosvirov, Alexander S; Sormova, Eliska; Gimmel, Matthew L; Vondráček, Dominik; Kramp, Katja (2019-10-19). "One less mystery in Coleoptera systematics: the position of Cydistinae (Elateriformia incertae sedis) resolved by multigene phylogenetic analysis". Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society. 20 (4): 1259–1277. doi:10.1093/zoolinnean/zlz104. ISSN 0024-4082.
- Kusy, Dominik; Motyka, Michal; Bocek, Matej; Vogler, Alfried P.; Bocak, Ladislav (2018-11-20). "Genome sequences identify three families of Coleoptera as morphologically derived click beetles (Elateridae)". Scientific Reports. Springer Science and Business Media LLC. 8 (1). doi:10.1038/s41598-018-35328-0. ISSN 2045-2322.
