A Guide to the Genera of Beetles of South Australia, Part 6

Volume 6 covers suborder Polyphaga: superfamiles Lymexloidea, Cleroidae and Cucujoidae.

From the introduction:
"The 28 families and 140 genera covered in this part of the series include the most taxonomically diverse and difficult superfamily of beetles (the Cucujoidea). As pointed out in the introduction to Part 5, not very many species are involved in either the Tenebrionoidea or Cucujoidea (unlike the phytophagous groups yet to come), but there is an unusual number of higher categories. The great majority are feeders on fungi and moulds, some are predators, and very few feed on live higher plants.

The task of identification, particularly in the Cucujoidea, is a very difficult one because the families differ from one another only slightly and the distinguishing external characters recombine in the different groups in a bewildering manner. Furthermore, most cucujoids are small to minute and it is often impossible to see structures, especially the critical tarsal ones, without microscopic preparation. This series of guides is not intended to require the user make preparations or dissections (although a binocular microscope is essential), therefore the procedure recommended for identification is to leaf through the pictures of whole beetles first (Figs 1-128) to narrow the search down to families and genera which look about right, then to check the list of characters of this restricted number of taxa on plates 10-13 one by one to eliminate a few more groups, and finally to try a few keys for the residue as a last resort.

The ‘Key to the remaining superfamilies’ (Plates 1-2) may be of some help but it assumes that the user has already eliminated all the groups previously covered in this series of guides. Even then there will be a few genera which will not key readily to a superfamily. Unfortunately there is no way that the identification of beetles can be made easy"