Sri Lanka is a tropical island situated close to the southern tip of India. The invertebrate fauna is as large as it is common to other regions of the world. There are about 2 million species of arthropods found in the world, and more are still being discovered to this day. This makes it very complicated and difficult to summarize the exact number of species found within a certain region.
This is a list of the coleopterans found from Sri Lanka, using recent family-level classification:[1]
Phylum: Arthropoda
Class: Insecta
Order: Coleoptera
Beetles are a group of insects that form the order Coleoptera. They have two pairs of wings, the front pair, the "elytra", being hardened and thickened into a shell-like protection for the rear pair and the beetle's abdomen. The order contains more species than any other order, constituting almost 25% of all known animal life-forms. About 40% of all described insect species are beetles (about 400,000 species), and new species are discovered frequently. The largest taxonomic family, the Curculionidae (the weevils or snout beetles), also belongs to this order.
The diversity of beetles is very wide-ranging. They are found in almost all types of habitats, but are not known to occur in the sea or in the polar regions. In Sri Lanka, particular beetle families are extensively studied,[2][3] but some others not at all.[4] Most of the studies beetles are due to the fact that they are pests for many cultivations.[5] Numerous works had been done in the 1980s and 1990s by foreign scientists such as Arrow (1910-1931), Franz (1982), Hammond (1972), Hansen (1999), Chatterjee (1924) and Bonadona (1986). The knowledge by local investigators opened in the early 2000s and in 2003, Prof. Dangalle studies heavily on tiger beetles. Then in 2013, Dr. Qader et al. studies beetles in Western province to find their ecological niches and distribution.[6] Weevils were studied by Prof. Gunawardena since 1993 and predatory Coccinellid beetles were studies by Dr. S Mayadunnage.[7][8] In 2002, Poorani described the updated version of the annotated checklist of the Coccinellidae fauna of the Indian subcontinent, in which 83 species of ladybirds are listed from Sri Lanka.[9] The members of subfamily Melolonthinae also been documented by Brinck, Anderson, and Cederholm. In 1979, Mohamed S. Mohamedsaid studied the taxonomy and distribution of the blister beetles of Sri Lanka. He described 7 genera with 15 species from the family Meloidae.[10] In 2020, one rove beetle and four dung beetles were described from Salgala, Aranayake the Knuckles Range, and Alic Land Estate, Kegalle.[11][12]
According to Channa Bambaradeniya et al., 3,033 species of coleopterans belongs to 115 families[13] are recorded from Sri Lanka, which comprises the largest animal group in Sri Lanka.[14]
