Treeclimbers: Dendroacalles, Silvacalles and Lauriacalles of the Canary Islands (Coleoptera: Cryptorhynchinae)

The TreeClimbers s.l. comprise the exclusively tree-living Cryptorhynchinae (Coleoptera: Curculionidae) that are found mainly in the Canary Islands. Klaus Fabian was asked to portray these colourful and bizarrely-bristled acrobats of the higher strata and canopies of the Canarian and - only two species- Madeiran laurel forest. At the beginning there was 'curiousness (if it might succeed) and fascination', because for the coleopterologist who was used to shifting the small number of Central European species of Acalles from the leaf litter of the native beech and oak forest, it was a big surprise to begin the subtle hunt in the moist, shady and evergreen forest of the thermo-canarian belt. This was more than ten years ago and it required the development of new techniques like beating with long stakes into huge beating trays to explore the Cryptorhynchinae fauna of the canopies. So-called, 'canopy fogging' with natural pyrethrum, a method which we applied on the Canary Islands in autumn 2008 for the first time, seemed much more promising and effective. Where the forest was not felled in the past - as in the national park of Garojonay on La Gomera - old and huge trees are located between large and impressive roots, evoking an unearthly atmosphere during the night. This is the real homeland of the TreeClimbers. In such habitats the specimens can be beaten in large numbers from the metres-long shoots growing from the base of the tree and the roots of the Lauraceae. From the phylogenetical point of view the TreeClimbers are highly derived'taxa' and, ecologically, these groups are extreme tree-specialists which colonized a very old habitat, the 'laurisilva', only in the recent geological history. way. In this illustrated book we want to build a bridge between art, morphology and molecular biology [long dash] an attempt to understand entomology as art and science again ...