Purpose and Request for Assistance

The purpose of this photographic catalog of the Cerambycidae of the New World is to provide images that will assist in the identification of longhorn beetles. Many species of longhorn beetles are invasive and authoritative identifications are necessary to initiate regulatory actions. It is hoped that the images in this catalog will in part provide information to identifiers to make their jobs easier. Familiarity with the World fauna is critical to understanding the distribution of invasive species. Cerambycid workers are fortunate that in many instances a dorsal image of these beetles is distinctive.

For many species in the catalog, images of the type specimen or type series are presented. Due to the various policies of repository institutions, it may be very difficult to obtain the actual type material through the mails. There is added benefit to having these images available in that workers will be able to view the type images and decide whether or not they need to request the actual specimens, perhaps saving wear and tear on these most important specimens.

It was my intention to follow the format of the Checklist of the Cerambycidae of the Western Hemisphere that has been published since 1993. The checklist is now kept current in electronic format by Miguel Monne and myself, and is available for purchase from BioQuip Products. The Old World catalog project came later and follows many published and unpublished sources, since there is no one single catalog.

Any errors are the responsibility of the author. I have compiled images from a wide variety of sources including the Internet. Users should contact me with corrections. In order to derive maximum benefit from the catalog, it is necessary to provide images of as many species as possible. To this end it is critical if users have images not represented in the catalog (especially types of newly described species) that they send them to me at bezbycids @ gmail.com. It would be preferable to receive color images but if only black and white images exist they would be fine as well. Both JPEGs and TIFF files are acceptable in their original size; the final images in the catalog are JPEGs re-sized to fit the website protocol. Submitters will receive photographic credit. This process will greatly enhance the value of the catalog.