A catalogue of the Coleoptera of the Dutch Antilles

Little has changed since Wallace (1876) and almost a century later Geijskes & Wagenaar Hummelinck (1951) wrote that only few have occupied themselves with the entomology of the Antilles. There is still a lot more to discover than is known at present about the islands’ insect fauna. Ivie et al. (2008a) discuss the considerable challenges of conducting invertebrate inventories in the Antilles. Major problems are caused by the so-called taxonomic impediment, i.e. the gap in our taxonomic knowledge and the shortage of trained taxonomists for the Antillean region. As far as the Coleoptera are concerned the only relatively well-studied groups in the Antilles comprise the larger species of families such as the Carabidae, Scarabaeidae, Cerambycidae and Tenebrionidae. Bright (2019) recently published a comprehensive review of the Scolytinae which is now probably the best studied group in the Antilles. For most other groups modern revisions are lacking. The number of new provisional and genus-level records in this paper and others (e.g. Ivie et al. 2008b) illustrate that fact.

Peck (2011, 2016) recently published an overview of the beetles of the Lesser Antilles, including the northern Dutch Antilles. These papers are largely based on Blackwelder’s (1944–1957) “Checklist of the coleopterous insects of Mexico, Central America, the West Indies, and South America”. The present report offers a first critical review of all published records of the islands of the Dutch Antilles including information about their collectors and important collections. A number of new island records for the Dutch Antilles are also added, as well as corrections and additions to the checklists by Blackwelder (1944–1957) and Peck (2011, 2016) for the non-Dutch northern Leeward Islands.