Strepsiptera or Sfi/lojri<1<c.] ABNORMAL COLEOPTERA. 453 



ABNORMAL COLEOPTERA. 



STREPSIPTERA or STYLOPIDJE. 



Although the Strepsiptera are now usually regarded as belonging to 

 the order Coleoptera, it must be allowed that the question cannot be 

 considered as settled, and Professor West wood is still of opinion -that 

 they ought to be regarded as a distinct order ; in a communication I 

 received from him on March 17th, 1889, he says, " My idea is that the 

 Morphology of the different states and the leading organisms warrant 

 the adoption of Mr. Kirby's rules for the establishment of it as a new 

 order of insects" ; in the second edition of Professor Rolleston's Forms 

 of Animal Life, p. 511, Mr. W. Hnckett Jackson, the editor, after men- 

 tioning that the Strepsiptera are included by Brauer and others among 

 the Coleoptera, and after alluding to the fact that Professor Westwood 

 is still of opinion that they should be retained as a separate order, con- 

 tinues as follows: " They are ento-parasitic on various Bees and Wasps. 

 The male is free, has small twisted fore-wings, longitudinally folded hind 

 wings, and a large metathorax. It is metagnathous (that is, it has the 

 mouth adapted for sucking in the imago and for biting in the larva). 

 The mandibles are reduced, the maxillae connate with the labrum, their 

 palpi two-jointed. The female is blind, vermiform, and never quits the 

 host. There is a dorsal canal by which the male effects impregnation. 

 The ova develop in the caelome (or body cavities) ; the Campodeiform 

 larvae escape by the dorsal canal. They are carried by a bee or wasp to 

 its nest, where they bore into a grub, and are transformed into apod 

 vermiform larvae. The male pupa is coarctate, and perforates one of the 

 abdominal intersegmental membranes of the Bee pupa, protruding only 

 the head, as does also the female." The Strepsiptera are peculiar as 

 being among the few insects that are viviparous and produce living 

 larvae, the only other instances being the Tachinte, and some OeBtrifli- 

 among the Dipt era, and some Staphylinidee among the true Coleoptera ; 

 they are also said, by Yon Siebold, to afford an instance of Paedogenesis, 

 or the production of ova by the immature animal, the ova being pro- 

 duced in the pupa at a very early period, and these being laid just be- 

 fore, or as soon as the insects become free ; this, of course, is also an 

 instance of Parthenogenesis, or the production of young without the 

 inteivention of the male, of which the chief examples are found among 

 insects in the Queen Bees, Humble Bees, Wasps and Aphides. 



Dr. Leconte and Dr. Horn place the Stylopidse at the end of the 

 Heteromera between the Rhipiphoridae and the Rhinomaceridae, which 

 they regard as the first of the families of the Rhynchophora ; if, how- 

 ever, they are to be regarded as Coleoptera at all, it is much the best 

 plan to place them at the end of the order as abnormal members, 

 although their habits and the fact that the larvae in their first state are 



