DIVERSITY OF ANIMAL LIFE

to classify living organisms, and he accumulated,

and in 1758 named, several hundred beetle

species. This led to a flowering of interest, as the

new naming system was applied ever wider, and

sailors and explorers brought back natural objects

from far away. Captain James Cook (1728–79)

included a naturalist, Joseph Banks (1743–1820),

on his famous Endeavour voyage, ultimately to

New South Wales, Australia. Most of Banks’s

collections survive, as one of the oldest modern-

style scientific collections in the Natural History

Museum in London, UK.

Specimens collected by Pierre Dejean

(1780–1845), an important entomologist

and officer in Napoleon’s army, still exist. He

supposedly got off his horse during the Peninsular

War Battle of Alcañiz to collect a Cebrioninae

(Elateridae), which he pinned into his helmet.

After his defeat, he was pleased to observe the

beetle was still in good condition, and it is now

in a museum in Torino, Italy.

By the nineteenth century, the study of beetles

had become widespread and popular both as a

formal discipline and as a scientific pastime, where

affluent private collectors assembled important

collections. Countries made collections too,

building natural history museums to house the

accumulated specimens, generate knowledge,

and educate and inspire the population. This

environment produced Charles Darwin and

Alfred Russel Wallace, two young men who shared

a burning interest in collecting beetles and went

on to change the world. Darwin said in his

autobiography, about his teenage beetle-collecting

days, “It seems therefore that a taste for collecting

beetles is some indication of future success in life!”

He and Wallace are good examples of such

success, starting out as beetle collectors and raised

to greater heights than anyone could imagine

from a platform of dead beetles.

The study of Coleoptera goes on, and museum

beetle collections provide vast archives of the

beetle knowledge accumulated across the world

and down the centuries, ready to answer more

questions, some of which society has not yet even

thought to ask.

Other invertebrates 69,000 species

Corals 2,175 species

Crustaceans 47,000 species

Mollusks 85,000 species

Spiders and scorpions

112,201 species

Beetles (Coleoptera)

387,100 species

Mammals 5,490 species

Birds 10,000 species

Reptiles 9,100 species

Fishes 31,300 species

Insects 1,000,000 species

Amphibians 6,450 species

left | Diagram showing the relative

diversity of different animal groups (total

1,377,716 species). Beetles represent

more than a quarter of known animals,

outnumbering all non-insects combined.