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New Species and Records of Featherwing Beetles (Coleoptera: Ptiliidae) puts together a number of recently published papers in Zootaxa and the Entomologist's Monthly Magazine. The author hopes that this will prove helpful to Museum workers in particular and will also encourage new students of this fascinating family of beetles. Several new genera and more than 100 new species are described and figured many being the first records for their countries and continents. Because of their minute size - most are less than 1 mm long - Ptiliidae fall out of the range of species collected by most students of beetles and have been very little studied as a result. The author's specialist techniques both in collecting and in the laboratory are fully described. These include the use of a scanning electron microscope and imaging with both stereoscopic and compound microscopes linked to appropriate software. More than 1000 images are included in the book. Because Featherwing Beetles exhibit parthenogenesis and polymorphism, and some even produce sperm which is much longer than the adult insect, they make interesting models for biological research.
About the author
Dr. Michael Darby is a Scientific Associate in the Department of Life Sciences at the Natural History Museum in London where he specialises in the taxonomy of the Featherwing Beetles (Coleoptera: Ptiliidae).
