Belidae

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Belidae

Rhinotia haemoptera

Kingdom:	Animalia
Phylum:	Arthropoda
Class:	Insecta
Subclass:	Pterygota
Order:	Coleoptera
Superfamily:	Curculionoidea
Family:	Belidae Schönherr, 1826

Subfamilies

Aglycyderinae
Belinae
Oxycoryninae
and see text

Belidae is a family of weevils, called belids or primitive weevils because they have straight antennae, unlike the "true weevils" or Curculionidae which have elbowed antennae. The Belidae today occur only in the Australia-New Guinea-New Zealand region and South America. They were more widespread during the Late Jurassic to Early Cretaceous, about 161-100 million years ago, when they were found at least in Central Asia, Spain and Brazil.^[1]

The fore tibia of belids is unusual in that it has a comb of setae in an apical groove opposite the tarsal articulation. Members of the subfamily Belinae are typically elongated and cylindrical. The subfamilies have each, at various times, been considered as separate families, but they are grouped together in most recent classifications. Some belines therefore resemble true weevils of the family Curculionidae (e.g., the genus Lixus), others resemble brentids, and others are mimetic and resemble beetles of families such as Lycidae or Pyrochroidae. A prehistoric subfamily only known from fossils are the Eobelinae^[1].

[edit] Selected genera

Archaeorrhynchus (fossil)
Belonotaris (fossil)
Belus
Davidibelus (fossil)
Eobelus (fossil)
Longidorsum (fossil)
Microprobelus (fossil)
Montsecbelus (fossil)
Pachyura
Probelopsis (fossil)
Probelus (fossil)
Rhinotia

[edit] Gallery

Rhinotia brunnea

Indeterminate Belidae (Rhinotia?), Australia

Rhopalotria dimidiata male

Rhopalotria dimidiata female

[edit] Footnotes

^ ^a ^b Ming et al. (2006)

[edit] References

Ming, Liu; Dong, Ren & Chungkun, Shi (2006): A new fossil weevil (Coleoptera, Curculionoidea, Belidae) from the Yixian Formation of western Liaoning, China. Progress in Natural Science 16 (8): 885-888. doi:10.1080/10020070612330084 (HTML abstract)