The Insect Orders

The 1 million or so species of the insect world (Class: Insecta) are divided into about 30 major groups called Orders, although there is dispute among entomologists on these divisions.

The orders are further split into Families, whose names all end -idae. Carabidae for example is the Beetle family known as the Ground Beetles and the Muscidae is the Fly family containing the house-flies. Each family contains a number of Genera containing a number of closely related Species. A species is an individual kind of insect or other organism and each has a scientific name that can be understood all over the world. This scientific name is always printed in italics and it consists of the name of the genus and a specific name.

To illustrate this, take a Rose Chafer, scientific name Cetonia aurata. This beetle can be classified in the following way:

Kingdom: Animalia (Animals)

Phylum: Arthropoda (Arthropods - meaning 'jointed leg')

    Sub-phylum: Mandibulata

    Super-class: Hexapoda

Class: Insecta

Order: Coleoptera (Beetles)

Family: Scarabaeidae (Dung Beetles & Chafers)

Genera: Cetonia

Species: Cetonia aurata

In the UK, there are 24 Orders of insect (and 3 orders of non-insect Hexapod), and each Order contains varying numbers of Species, from 1 (Mantodea) to over 7,000 (Hymenoptera) British representatives.