A beautiful and diverse set of beetles.

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   Sheril Kirshenbaum (sheril@mastodon.social)'s status on Monday, 20-Nov-2023 10:48:23 JST Sheril Kirshenbaum

   Biologist J. B. S. Haldane once quipped that if there's a God, the Creator seems to have “an inordinate fondness for beetles.”

   Why? Well, 1/2 of species described in #science are insects (among eukaryotes). Of those, >1/3 are beetles, at ~400,000 known species.

   I’m fond of these critters bc I began my career working with Plagiodera versicolora, a particularly cute beetle.

   Now some entomologists suspect there may be just as many parasitic wasps but that’s a tale for another day.