A Checklist of the Beetles of Cuba with Data on Distributions and Bionomics (Insecta: Coleoptera)

This summary of the beetle fauna of Cuba lists 87 families, 954 genera, and 2,673 species plus three families, three genera, and three species of strepsipterans. Many families in Cuba are poorly or not at all studied and additional species will be found. The fauna contains 1,495 endemic species - species which are naturally limited to Cuba. There are 1,092 native species - these have natural distributions in adjacent or surrounding land masses (the Bahama Islands, Florida and the southeastern United States, Jamaica, the Cayman Islands, México and Central America, and Hispaniola and other Caribbean islands to the east). There are 86 species which are recognized to have been introduced by human activities and many of these are pests of agriculture, forestry, or stored products. The fauna is disharmonic (unbalanced), as is expected for an oceanic island fauna which has long been isolated by water. Several families that occur on the continental margins of the Caribbean are apparently not present in Cuba. Geological history suggests that Cuba has existed as an island and has been available for insect colonization for the past 35 million years. Species movement to and from Cuba may have been more frequent at times of past low sea levels during Pleistocene glacials, when the neighboring continental margins and Caribbean islands were more exposed and the water gaps between them and Cuba were smaller. Twenty-eight genera contain 10 or more species limited to Cuba and may represent island “species swarms.”