street-food: Lepidoptera

Evidence: 94 • authority: 72

Lepidoptera ( LEP-ih-DOP-tər-ə) or lepidopterans are an order of winged insects which include butterflies and moths. About 180,000 species of the Lepidoptera have been described, representing 8.6% of the total described species of living organisms, making it the second largest insect order (behind Coleoptera) with 133 families and 43 superfamilies, and one of the most widespread and widely recognizable insect orders in the world. Lepidopterans have several distinctive features, especially colored scales that cover their bodies, large triangular wings, and a proboscis for drinking nectar. Almost all species have membranous wings. Mating and egg-laying are normally near or on host plants for…

Evidence: 40 • authority: 88

Taxonomic Review of Fossil Coleopterous Families (Insecta, Coleoptera). Suborder Archostemata: Superfamilies Coleopseoidea and Cupedoidea. The paper is the first of a series, which aims to present a consistent interpretation of the suprageneric taxa of fossil beetles in the current century and their generic and species composition. Order Coleoptera is considered in composition of the superorder Coleopteroidea Handlirsch, 1903 (= Coleopterida sensu Boudreaux, 1979, nec Pearse, 1936) together with orders Skleroptera and Strepsiptera, and also with the family Umenocoleidae of unclear position. This paper includes the archostematan superfamilies Coleopseoidea and Cupedoidea of the infraorder Cu…

Evidence: 23 • authority: 92

Annotated checklist of the beetles (Coleoptera) of the California Channel Islands.. The beetle fauna of the California Channel Islands is here enumerated for the first time in over 120 years. We provide an annotated checklist documenting species-by-island diversity from an exhaustive literature review and analysis of a compiled dataset of 26,609 digitized specimen records to which were added over 3,000 individual specimen determinations. We report 825 unique species from 514 genera and 71 families (including 17 new family records) comprising 1,829 species-by-island records. Species totals for each island are as follows: Anacapa (74); San Clemente (197); San Miguel (138); San Nicolas (146);…

Evidence: — • authority: 72

Insects (from Latin insectum) are invertebrates of the class Insecta. They are the largest group within the arthropod phylum. Insects have an exoskeleton, a three-part body (head, thorax and abdomen), three pairs of jointed legs, compound eyes, and a pair of antennae. Insects are the most diverse group of animals, with more than a million described species; they represent more than half of all animal species. The insect nervous system consists of a brain and a ventral nerve cord. Insects breathe air through a system of paired openings along their sides, connected to small tubes that take air directly to the tissues. The blood therefore does not carry oxygen; it is only partly contained in v…

Evidence: — • authority: 72

Insects, which are a type of arthropod, are the most numerous group of multicellular organisms on the planet, with over a million species identified so far. The title of heaviest insect in the world has many contenders, the most frequently crowned of which is the larval stage of the goliath beetle, Goliathus goliatus, the maximum size of which is at least 115 g (4.1 oz) and 11.5 cm (4.5 in). The highest confirmed weight of an adult insect is 71 g (2.5 oz) for a gravid female giant wētā, Deinacrida heteracantha, although it is likely that one of the elephant beetles, Megasoma elephas and Megasoma actaeon, or goliath beetles, both of which can commonly exceed 50 g (1.8 oz) and 10 cm (3.9 in),…

Evidence: — • authority: 72

Birds are vertebrate animals constituting the class Aves, characterised by feathers, toothless beaked jaws, the laying of hard-shelled eggs, a high metabolic rate, a four-chambered heart, and a strong yet lightweight skeleton. They are warm-blooded, live worldwide, and range in size from the 5.5 cm (2.2 in) bee hummingbird to the 2.8 m (9 ft 2 in) common ostrich. There are over 11,000 living species of birds, classified in 44 orders. More than half of the world's bird species are passerine or "perching" birds. Nearly all birds have wings whose development varies according to the life style of each species. Wings, which are modified forelimbs, gave birds the ability to fly, although further…