Introducing the Website

The purpose of this website is to provide the amateur entomologists with an easy tool to study a group of beetles called Calosoma. The abundant available individual descriptions and partial revisions are not always easy to find and above all they lack an updated general revision, after that of Jeannel (1940) that dates back more than seventy years ago.
Starting out from that revision, which still represents a good reference due its general approach, subsequent works have been discussed, as to whether to accept their conclusions or not, on a case by case basis. As a matter of fact the present work is not a scientific revision in itself, but it only aims to provide criteria to allow the amateur to navigate among the species mentioned in the literature.
Where the descriptions have been accumulated to take into account the individual variability or the variability of populations, the new taxa mentioned in the literature are reported and discussed during the handling of the species to which most likely they can be referred, but not illustrated separately, in order not to complicate the discussion . Such a choice will not prevent to investigate the matter further for those who wish to do so. The bibliography in the Appendix may be directly used for the purpose. For each considered species or subspecies a photographic image is provided (additional images are given if required by the variability of individual or geographic variation). The images are accompanied by brief notes that describe the species; a longer note is provided when it is necessary to deepen its systematic position.

• Systematic framework
• Biological notes
• Index of Scientific Names
• Bibliography