Byrrhidae

Byrrhidae, the pill beetles, is a family of beetles in the superfamily Byrrhoidea. These beetles are common in the forests of the Northern Hemisphere. They feed mainly on moss. Populations increase after wildfires.[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]

Byrrhidae
Temporal range: Cretaceous–Recent
Byrrhus pilula
Scientific classification
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Arthropoda
Class: Insecta
Order: Coleoptera
Suborder: Polyphaga
Infraorder: Elateriformia
Superfamily: Byrrhoidea
Family: Byrrhidae
Latreille, 1804
Subfamilies

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

Genera include:[4]

Simplocaria semistriata

References
  1. Phillips, I. D., Cobb, T. P., & Spence, J. R. (2008). Salvage logging and edge effects on pill beetle abundance (Coleoptera: Byrrhidae). The Coleopterists Bulletin 324-27.
  2. Kirejtshuk, Alexander G.; Nel, André (December 2016). "Lidryopinae, new byrrhid subfamily from the Lower Cretaceous of France (Coleoptera, Byrrhidae)". Cretaceous Research. 67: 140–147. doi: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. Byrrhidae. Integrated Taxonomic Information System (ITIS).


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