Insectos

According to the late English naturalist James Yate Johnson, there are 1,331 species of insects in the Madeira archipelago, distributed as follows: Coleoptera, 695; Euplexoptera, 4; Orthoptera, 19; Thysanoptera, 6; Neuroptera, 37; Trichoptera, 10; Hymenoptera, 217; Lepidoptera, 112; Hemiptera, 54; Homoptera, 14; Aphaniptera, 3; and Diptera, 160. However, it should be noted that after these data were published, new studies were conducted on some groups, with Professor Teodoro Becker identifying 212 Madeiran species in the Diptera group and Malcolm Burr identifying 29 in the Orthoptera group. Perhaps we would not be far from the truth if we said that there are about 2,000 species of insects in the archipelago, with the groups of Coleoptera, Hymenoptera, and Diptera being the most widely represented in our region. Wollaston, the author of Insecta Maderensia, found 629 Coleoptera in Madeira, 163 in Porto Santo, and 89 in the Desertas, noting that many of these species do not have wings or have them very imperfectly developed. This fact, according to Darwin, is a consequence of natural selection, probably combined with the lack of use of those organs. Insects, adds the same naturalist, that do not feed on the ground, but, like certain Coleoptera and Lepidoptera, feed on flowers, and therefore must use their wings to find food, have, as noted by Wollaston, very developed wings, instead of having them in a rudimentary state.