Narrative

This lifeform is found in the Andes mountains of South America.

Rutelinae are a subfamily of the Scarab Beetles. These beetles can be very highly colored. Rutelinae are commonly found in North and South America.

Genus Plusiotus is found from Texas and Arizona south to Central Colombia and then to Ecuador. Several of the species in this genus are highly reflective and appear to be either gold or silver. Some of the kinds are highly valued by museums because of their unusual appearance and rarity. Such names as the Gold Beetle and the Silver Beetle have been given to several of the species in the genus Plusiotus. Typically, a camera is unable to capture the color. Some of these Plusiotus beetles are very spectacular.

Pelidnota genus is also in the Rutelinae and contains some highly colored species. Pelidnota punctata is very common in eastern North America.

Rutelinae are a group of usually brightly colored scarab beetles that are found throughout the world. These beetles can be very highly colored. Rutelinae are commonly found in North and South America. They are also commonly found in the Indo-Australian region. Some of the species have enlarged rear legs in the males.

Beetles (Order Coleoptera) are a diverse group of insects found throughout the world. They usually can fly and typically have four wings. Two of the wings are hardened (elytra) and serve as a body cover to protect the flying wings and abdomen. Beetles begin their life as a larvae or grub that goes through a metamorphosis that turns this worm-like creature into an adult with six legs and four wings. There probably are over 500,000 species of beetles in the world. However, that number is only conjecture as the United States does not have a complete list of its known species.

The United States has relatively few exotic beetles. However, countries like Brazil, Mexico, Ghana, Zaire, Malaysia, and Peru have many beautiful beetles.

Exotic beetles are such a fascination in Europe and Japan that they are collected much as coins are collected throughout the rest of the world.

Insects (Class Insecta) are the most successful animals on Earth if success is measured by the number of species or the total number of living organisms. This class contains more than a million species, of which North America has approximately 100,000. (Recent estimates place the number of worldwide species at four to six million.)

Insects have an exoskeleton. The body is divided into three parts. The foremost part, the head, usually bears two antennae. The middle part, the thorax, has six legs and usually four wings. The last part, the abdomen, is used for breathing and reproduction.

Although different taxonomists divide the insects differently, about thirty-five different orders are included in most of the systems.

The following abbreviated list identifies some common orders of the many different orders of insects discussed herein:

Odonata: - Dragon and Damsel Flies
Orthoptera: - Grasshoppers and Mantids
Homoptera: - Cicadas and Misc. Hoppers
Diptera: - Flies and Mosquitoes
Hymenoptera: - Ants, Wasps, and Bees
Lepidoptera: - Butterflies and Moths
Coleoptera: - Beetles

Jointed Legged Animals (Phylum Arthropoda) make up the largest phylum. There are probably more than one million different species of arthropods known to science. It is also the most successful animal phylum in terms of the total number of living organisms.

Butterflies, beetles, grasshoppers, various insects, spiders, and crabs are well-known arthropods.

The phylum is usually broken into the following five main classes:
Arachnida: - Spiders and Scorpions
Crustacea: - Crabs and Crayfish
Chilopoda: - Centipedes
Diplopoda: - Millipedes
Insecta: - Insects

There are several other rare classes in the arthropods that should be mentioned. A more formal list is as follows:

Sub Phylum Chelicerata
C. Arachnida: - Spiders and scorpions
C. Pycnogonida: - Sea spiders (500 species)
C. Merostomata: - Mostly fossil species

Sub Phylum Mandibulata
C. Crustacea: - Crabs and crayfish

Myriapod Group
C. Chilopoda: - Centipedes
C. Diplopoda: - Millipedes
C. Pauropoda: - Tiny millipede-like
C. Symphyla: - Garden centipedes

Insect Group
C. Insecta: - Insects

The above list does not include some extinct classes of Arthropods such as the Trilobites.