Flea beetle
| Flea beetle | ||||||||||||
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Aphthona flava |
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| Systematics | ||||||||||||
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| Scientific name | ||||||||||||
| Alticini | ||||||||||||
| Newman , 1834 |
The flea beetles (Alticini) are a group of leaf beetles with an uncertain systematic position. Traditionally mostly understood as the subfamily Alticinae, today they are mostly considered a tribe of the subfamily Galerucinae.
features
A typical feature of these beetles is the greatly enlarged posterior femur (one of the upper leg sections of arthropods). With this you can, if you feel disturbed, jump over up to 100 times your body length. This behavior also earned them their German name.
These are small to medium-sized beetles that are usually between 2 mm and 4 mm long. However, there are also smaller (up to 1 mm) and significantly larger (up to 20 mm) species. The beetles are usually short oval in outline. The wing covers have a wide variety of colors, but are almost always metallic shimmering. Many species also have two stripes or a few points on the elytra.
Way of life
The individual flea beetle species are mostly specialized in a single or a few closely related plant species. The adults typically eat small round to oval holes in the leaves of their host plant.
Typically, the adults overwinter under the leaves or in dead plant parts. In spring or late summer, the females lay their eggs at the bottom of a host plant. The larvae then feed on their roots over the summer. In late summer, the next generation of adults emerged.
Systematics
While the togetherness of the Galerucini and the Alticini in a clade is generally accepted and well established, there are various theories about the relationship between the groups. One theory sees the Galerucini as a monophyletic group within the then paraphyletic Alticini. The second assumes that both Alticini and Galerucini are monophyletic and together form a clade; the supporters of this theory often regard the flea beetles as an independent subfamily. The third theory considers the Alticini to be monophyletic, but these would be nested in a group of Galerucini (the Subtribus Luperina). Therefore, the predominant solution today is to regard the Alticini not as a separate subfamily, but as a tribe of the Galerucinae. Phylogenomic investigations (based on the comparison of homologous DNA sequences) provided evidence of monophyletic alticini, but some species groups would have to be excluded from these and incorporated into the Galerucinae. If this were true, the group's distinctive jumping mechanism would have emerged convergent .
Genera
The flea beetles comprise more than 8,000 described species. They are distributed worldwide with over 560 genera. The Neotropic is particularly rich in species . They occur in almost all habitats. The following generic list of Palearctic fauna follows Konstantinov and Vandenberg
- Altica
- Anthobiodes
- Aphthona
- Aphthonaltica
- Aphthonoides
- Apteropeda
- Argopistes
- Argopus
- Arrhenocoela
- Batophila
- Blepharida
- Chaetocnema
- Clitea
- Crepidodera
- Derocrepis
- Dibolia
- Epitrix
- Hemipyxis
- Hermaeophaga
- Hespera
- Hippuriphila
- Horaia
- Hyphasis
- Lipromima
- Liprus
- Longitarsus
- Luperomorpha
- Lythraria
- Manobia
- Mantura
- Meishania
- Minota
- Mniophila
- Neocrepidodera
- Nonarthra
- Novofoudrasia
- Ochrosis
- Oedionychis
- Ogloblinia
- Omeisphaera
- Ophrida
- Orestia
- Parargopus
- Pentamesa
- Philopona
- Phygasia
- Cabbage fleas ( Phyllotreta )
- Podagrica
- Podagricomela
- Podontia
- Pseudodera
- Earth fleas ( Psylliodes )
- Sangariola
- Sinaltica
- Sphaeroderma
- Trachyaphthona
- Xuthea
- Zipangia
Types (selection)
- Loggerhead flea ( Altica oleracea )
- Chaetocnema concinna
- Chaetocnema hortensis
- Light-edged long-footed earth flea ( Longitarsus dorsalis )
- Luperomorpha xanthodera
- Neocrepidodera ferruginea
- Horseradish flea ( Phyllotreta armoraciae )
- Black cabbage flea ( Phyllotreta atra )
- Shiny green cabbage flea ( Phyllotreta cruciferae )
- Yellow-striped cabbage flea ( Phyllotreta nemorum )
- Blue silk flea ( Phyllotreta nigripes )
- Wavy-striped coal flea ( Phyllotreta undulata )
- Mallow flea ( Podagrica fuscicornis )
- Artichoke flea ( Sphaeroderma testaceum )
gallery
Batophila rubi on blackberry leaf
Golden earth flea ( Crepidodera aurea )
Altica sp.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Yi Hua, Rolf G. Beutel, Si-qin Ge, Rui-E Nie, Xing-Ke Yang (2014): The morphology of galerucine and alticine larvae (Coleoptera: Chrysomelidae) and its phylogenetic implications. Arthropod Systematics and Phylogeny 72 (2): 75-94.
- ↑ KS Nadein & J. Bezděk (2014) Galerucinae Latreille 1802. In: Leschen RAB, Beutel RG (editors), Handbook of Zoology, Vol. IV Arthropoda: Insecta. Part 39. Coleoptera, Vol. 3: Morphology and Systematics (Phytophaga). - Walter De Gruyter, Berlin, New York. ISBN 978-3-11-027446-2 limited preview on Google Books
- ↑ Patrice Bouchard, Yves Bousquet, Anthony E. Davies, Miguel A. Alonso-Zarazaga, John F. Lawrence, Chris HC Lyal, Alfred F. Newton, Chris AM Reid, Michael Schmitt, S. Adam Ślipiński, Andrew BT Smith (2011 ): Family-group names in Coleoptera (Insecta). ZooKeys, 88: 1-972. doi : 10.3897 / zookeys.88.807
- ↑ Deyan Ge, Jesús Gómez-Zurita, Douglas Chesters, Xingke Yang, Alfried P. Vogler (2012): SupAGENeric systematics of flea beetles (Chrysomelidae: Alticinae) inferred from multilocus sequence data. Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution 62: 793-805. doi : 10.1016 / j.ympev.2011.11.028
- ↑ Guide to Palaearctic Fly Beetle Genera ( Memento of the original from July 26, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
