Phylogeny of the Coleoptera Based on Morphological Characters of Adults and Larvae

In order to infer phylogenetic relationships within the extraordinarily speciesrich order Coleoptera, a cladistic analysis is performed, in which 516 adult and larval morphological characters are scored for 359 beetle taxa, representing 314 families or subfamilies plus seven outgroup taxa representing seven holometabolan orders. Many morphological features are discussed at length with accompanying illustrations, and an attempt is made to homologize these and employ a uniform set of terms throughout the order. The resulting data matrix is analyzed using the parsimony ratchet in conjunction with implied weighting. The resulting most parsimonious tree found the order Strepsiptera to be sister to Coleoptera, each…