Studies On Neotropical Coleoptera Larvae
Project promoting the collection of living immature Coleoptera for raising and maintenance in laboratories in order to correlate them with their peer adults. The plan intends to broaden the knowledge of the immature beetles existing in the Neotropical Region and also to gather data to help, in the long term, with a new taxonomy of the Coleoptera Order, including adults and immature.
This project developed the Coleoptera Immature Collection of the Museu de Zoologia – USP (CICMZ), which is the second largest in the world and the best in South America. Most of the larvae studied were collected alive, reared in laboratory and deposited in that collection. It now comprises about 20,000 larvae, 3,500 pupae and 18,000 adults, being the solely collection to have the majority of the immature correlated with the adults, through rearing
Collecting Larvae in Seashore
Rearing Larvae in The Laboratory
Basing upon this collection, several scientific articles were produced in a series named “Larvae of Neotropical Coleoptera”. Apart from these, other articles were published, including systematic and cladistic revisions, and two books: “Larvas de Coleoptera do Brasil” in 1988 and Insetos Imaturos, metamorfose e identificação Insectos Inmaduros, Metamorfosis e Identificación in 2006. Learn more about them.