Gyrinidae, Noteridae and Paelobiidae
Orectochilus villosus © Udo Schmidt
There are five water-beetle families in the Adephaga, all of which spend the egg, larval and adult stages in water but most pupate on land. This page deals with the three smaller families:
- Gyrinidae (whirligig beetles: 12 species in 2 genera),
- Noteridae (sometimes called burrowing water beetles: 2 British species of Noterus), and
- Paelobiidae (the Screech Beetle Hygrobia hermanni is the only British representative).
The other two adephagan water-beetle families are the Haliplidae and Dytiscidae.
I haven’t seen it at the time of writing but the new RES Handbook by Garth Foster and Laurie Friday is bound to be excellent and will supercede Laurie Friday’s (1988) AIDGAP keys as the standard identification guide to these families.
For the forthcoming book Beetles of Britain and Ireland, Vol. 1, Andrew Duff has written a chapter on these three families which was formerly downloadable from here for testing. Andrew has withdrawn the download now that the RES Handbook has been published. However, if anyone would like to assist with Andrew’s project by testing his keys, please get in touch with him: andrew.duff (*at*) virgin.net (replacing ‘(*at*)’ with the @ symbol).