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Bruchus

Bruchus
Bruchus brachialis usda.jpg
Bruchus brachialis
Scientific classification
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Arthropoda
Class: Insecta
Order: Coleoptera
Suborder: Polyphaga
Infraorder: Cucujiformia
Superfamily: Chrysomeloidea
Family: Chrysomelidae
Subfamily: Bruchinae
Genus: Bruchus
Linnaeus, 1767
Species

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Bruchus is a genus of beetles in the leaf beetle family, Chrysomelidae. They are distributed mainly in the Palearctic, especially in Europe. Several occur in other parts of the world, such as North America, Africa, and Australia, as introduced species. Several species are notorious agricultural pests.

The genus is part of the subfamily Bruchinae. Members of the subfamily are known commonly as bean weevils. Many authors prefer to call them seed-beetles or bean beetles, because they are not true weevils, and because in most species, the larvae develop inside seeds, particularly beans. Because Bruchinae was known as the family Bruchidae until the 1990s, they are sometimes still called bruchid beetles.

The genus Bruchus is well-defined by a number of characters, such as the shape of the pronotum, an arrangement of spines or plates on the tibia of the middle leg of the male, and the unique morphology of the male genitalia. The latter are slender and elongated, and the eighth abdominal sternite in particular is large and sclerotized, "with a characteristic boomerang shape". This part of the genitalia has been called the "urosternite", but other authors suggest the term "ventral plate" is more appropriate. The robust ventral plate of Bruchus helps distinguish the genus from other seed-beetles, which tend to have vestigial or lobe-like ventral plates. The ventral plate is useful in identification because each species seems to have a distinctive shape to it, and it does not vary among individuals of one species.


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