Leaf Beetle

Leaf Beetle

See text.

Beetles in the family Chrysomelidae are commonly known as leaf beetles. This is a family of over 35,000 species in more than 2,500 genera, one of the largest and most commonly encountered of all beetle families.

Leaf beetles are partially recognizable by their tarsal formula, which appears to be 4-4-4, but is actually 5-5-5. They are distinguished with difficulty from long-horned beetles (family Cerambycidae) by the antennae not arising from frontal tubercles. Adult and larval leaf beetles feed on all sorts of plant tissue. Many are economically important pests of agriculture, for example the Colorado potato beetle (Leptinotarsa decemlineata), the asparagus beetle (Crioceris asparagi), the cereal leaf beetle (Oulema melanopus), and various flea beetles.

Read more about Leaf Beetle:  Classification, Gallery

Famous quotes containing the words leaf and/or beetle:

    “... Can poet’s thought
    That springs from body and in body falls
    Like this pure jet, now lost amid blue sky,
    Now bathing lily leaf and fish’s scale,
    Be mimicry?”
    William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)

    After the planet becomes theirs, many millions of years will have to pass before a beetle particularly loved by God, at the end of its calculations will find written on a sheet of paper in letters of fire that energy is equal to the mass multiplied by the square of the velocity of light. The new kings of the world will live tranquilly for a long time, confining themselves to devouring each other and being parasites among each other on a cottage industry scale.
    Primo Levi (1919–1987)