Phytophaga
Phytophaga is a clade of beetles within the infraorder Cucujiformia consisting of the superfamilies Chrysomeloidea and Curculionoidea that are distinctive in the plant-feeding habit combined with the tarsi being pseudotetramerous or cryptopentamerous, where the fourth tarsal segment is greatly reduced or hidden by the third tarsal segment. The Cucujoidea are a sister to the Phytophaga. In some older literature the term Phytophaga was applied only to the Chrysomeloidea.
The diversification of species within the Phytophaga is thought to be associated with the speciation within the Angiosperms. The plant-feeding habit may have been a shift from microfungal, spore-feeding and saprotrophic habits. With nearly 125,000 described species they are the second largest phytophagous lineage of insects after the order Lepidoptera.
