The order of Beetles (Coleoptera) is composed of a
certain number of families. The family is one level of the taxonomic hierarchy,
and serves as a convenient way of ordering the amazing diversity of beetles in
the world: ground beetles, long-horned beetles,
ladybirds, scarab beetles, etc. Only in Europe, there are more
than one hundred families. The best known are the ground beetles,
the stag beetles, the scarab beetles, the metallic wood-boring
beetles, the long-horned beetles, the leaf beetles, the ladybirds
and the snout beetles (or weevils).
The classification of the families introduced here follows the
supposed order of the evolution of the beetles: from the more ancestral or
primitive to those families that are thought to be more derived or advanced.