An old question

  There is a story, possibly apocryphal, of the distinguished British biologist, 
 J.B.S. Haldane, who found himself in the company of a group of theologians. On 
 being asked what one could conclude as to the nature of the Creator from a 
 study of his creation, Haldane is said to have answered, “An inordinate 
 fondness for beetles.”

Beetles are like the MVP of species (minimum viable, not most valuable). Some superstructure (which can often double as armor) plus food storage. Even crabs are extravagant next to a beetle: crab takes that recipe and adds on attack capabilities, which are sometimes wasteful (crabs attacking humans are wasting their time for example).

Life: beetles, plus extra features which must be justified.

Lots of beetles, but almost certainly even more wasps! Parasitoid wasps attack pretty much every known insect species, even other parasitoid wasps. If there's not a known parasitoid for a given insect species, you usually just haven't looked hard enough. Given that parasitoids tend to be specialists, attacking one or only a few other species, the math works out to there being more parasitoids than anything else around. Great paper on the topic here: https://bmcecol.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12898-01...

Note: The article shares a common misconception about beetle anatomy, that the thorax is short and only has one pair of legs. Like all other insects, beetles thoraxes have three pairs of legs. It's just that their abdomen is shorter than it appears.

See this video from Clint's Reptiles for the explanation: https://youtu.be/-aV78eNbdTU?si=DCe3ZUx8C6IKlXJe&t=978

I think it's interesting as there is a common beetle ancestor.

Usually, when we find something like this, the answer is because "taxonomy is more art than science". Like trees or fish. Both exist all over their respective branches of the evolutionary tree. You have fish species that do not have a common ancestor that does not also include "not fish".

Same with trees. Two "trees" can exist in groups with "not trees"

Although, I guess the picture could also be incomplete. It could just be showing the beetle lineage and not anything else that may branch from those branches.

In which case, this could be another case of cancerification. As much as nature loves a crab, it loves to start from a beetle.

Armchair evolutionist suggestion: because there must be something in the code that makes them better than other species at being picky mating? Or particularly susceptible for breaking compatibility in terms of successful mating?

Surely someone will mention the Last Continent by Terry Pratchett!

I will add a new reason. They are pleasant to study.

They are small, hard and easy to manipulate and keep dry. A big collection fits in any room and they have an entertaining endless diversity of forms and colours, so primates like to collect them.

Don't believe me? How many roundworm or fly species do we know? How many we don't know still?

Not sure how the article doesn't include this quote from British evolutionary biologist and geneticist J.B.S. Haldane: "If a god or divine being had created all living organisms on Earth, then that creator must have an inordinate fondness for beetles."

Meta comment: I really like submissions like this which share great knowledge from a totally different field and spur inspiration and discussion. I learn a lot and also find comments like bee_rider's (current) top comment to be relevant to tech work.

Because god is an entomologist. I mean it's not just the beetles. Just count the terrestrial arthropods.

Today I learned that elytra is not just wings in Minecraft.

>> Why are there so many beetle species?

Because beetles are randy little buggers... yeah, baby. [0]

(It also helps when both your size and food source(s) let you survive extinction events easier than those silly mega- fauna/flora)

[0] https://www.google.com/search?q=beetle+mating&tbm=isch

Maybe the Sumerian or (blue-skinned) Vedic Gods saw some giant sentient machine life, and went out of their way to honor these "Angels" with many eyes and huge wings by creating what we call insects (in addition to Humans [Hanuman's ilk]).

When you transcend the physical form into a body of energy (hint: OR=constructive, XOR=deconstructive, NOT=XOR(k,1), NOT( OR(j,k) )=NOR(j,k), NOR=Functionally Complete, ergo EMF or even sound can be Turing Complete), then as an energy body you may want to interact with physical forms again w/o ionizing them; So you'll create (sentient) machinations that can do tasks. Because your design parameters include survivability across large thermal and pressure gradients you'll [re]discover giant robotic beetle design.

If you'll excuse me, I've got to tend a Kephri (beetle of remanifestation) who is eagerly attempting to choose an Odin to ride this 6-legged "Steed" next Ragnorok.