Contributions to Systematics and Biology of Beetles : Papers Celebrating the 80th Birthday of Igor Konstantinovich Lopatin

This volume is dedicated to Professor Igor Konstantinovich Lopatin in celebration of his 80th birthday.

Igor Konstantinovich is a renown taxonomist, prolific author, innovative biological explorer, and respected teacher who trained hundreds of students and during his professional life was (and still is) an inspiration and a mentor for scores of taxonomists.

His tireless enthusiastic work shaped generations of Belarusian zoologists, brought a wide and steady respect of systematics into a local scientific community.

But most important, he taught us that collecting and studying beetles, small and big, bright and dull, is a noble thing to do.

Contributions assembled in this volume reflect Lopatin's intellectual breadth and diverse scientific interests.

Some dwells on Lopatin's interest in biogeography of arid areas of the Palearctic describing zoogeographic connections between desert faunas of Middle Asia, Iran, and Afghanistan, and leaf beetle fauna of the Hermon Mountains in Israel.

Other contributions reflect Lopatin's interest in host plant relationships, e.g. discovery of a rare crucifer in Turkey being eaten by an even rarer flea beetle. Many contributions are revisions and keys for identification in nearly all major groups of beetles.

Some are checklists, faunistic notes, ecological studies, and many contain descriptions of new taxa in many beetle families.

This book will be an indispensable source of information on beetle taxonomy, diversity, biogeography, and host plant relationships.

It will be useful for entomologists, ecologists, extension scientists, entomology students, comparative morphologists and evolutionary biologists working across beetle taxa and anybody interested in beetle identification.