Byrrhidae Explained

Byrrhidae, the pill beetles, is a family of beetles in the superfamily Byrrhoidea. They are generally found in damp habitats within cooler-high latitude regions of both hemispheres. Most byrrhids feed on moss, lichens and algae, though some species feed on vascular plants.^[1] The oldest undoubted record of the family is Lidryops from the earliest Late Cretaceous Charentese amber of France, with other less certain records going back to the Middle Jurassic, but these possibly belong to Byrrhoidea.^[2] There around 500 extant species in 40 genera.

Taxonomy

There are about 450 species in this family.^[3]

Genera include:^[4]

• Amphycyrta
• Arctobyrrhus
• Byrrhus
• Chaetophora
• Curimopsis
• Cytilus
• Eusomalia
• Exomella
• Lioligus
• Lioon
• Listemus
• Morychus
• Porcinolus
• Sierraclava
• Simplocaria

Notes and References

1. Maier, Crystal A., Lawrence, John F. and Leschen, Richard A. B.. "Byrrhidae Latreille, 1804: Coleoptera, Beetles". Handbook of Zoology Online, edited by Andreas Schmidt-Rhaesa. Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter, 2016.
2. Kirejtshuk. Alexander G.. Nel. André. December 2016. Lidryopinae, new byrrhid subfamily from the Lower Cretaceous of France (Coleoptera, Byrrhidae). Cretaceous Research. en. 67. 140–147. 10.1016/j.cretres.2016.07.007.
3. Lawrence, J. F., Slipinski, A., Jaeger, O., & Pütz, A. (2013). The Australian Byrrhinae (Coleoptera: Byrrhidae) with descriptions of new genera and species. Zootaxa 3745(3), 301-29.
4. https://www.itis.gov/servlet/SingleRpt/SingleRpt?search_topic=TSN&search_value=113997 Byrrhidae.