Introduction

The beetles, or the great insect order Coleoptera, are extremely diverse and contain more species than any other order in the animal kingdom (see Glossary at the end of the book for unfamiliar terms). The observant naturalist soon discovers that beetles fall into family subgroups such as ground beetles (Carabidae), scarab beetles (Scarabaeidae), or weevils (Curculionidae). Current classification places the tiger beetles in the ancient ground-beetle family Carabidae (see Table 1 for an example of the current classification). In most insect and beetle books, the tiger beetles and the rest of the ground beetles are found near the beginning (e.g., White 1983).