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Ptinella sp. (Coleoptera: Staphylinoidea: Ptiliidae). Scale - 0.2 mm.

PTILIIDAE is a fascinating group of Coleoptera. Their major attraction (well.., for me) is that the family includes the smallest known beetles. When you mount a ptillid in a permanent microscope slide and put in under a microscope with, let's say, 400x magnification, the view is just beautiful! All details and structures are clearly visible and easily available for study. There are about 600 species known worldwide, but Dybas (1976) estimated that this is less then 1/10 of reality.

More to see on Internet about PTILIIDAE:

Tree of Life: Ptiliidae

More to read about PTILIIDAE:

Grebennikov V.V. & R.G. Beutel (2002): External and internal morphology of Ptinella larva (Staphylinoidea: Ptiliidae). Arthropod Structure and Development: 31: 157-172. Full Text (pdf, 1.5 Mb).

Dybas H. S. (1976) The larval characters of featherwing and limulodid beetles and their family relationships in the Staphylinoidea (Coleoptera: Ptiliidae and Limulodidae). Fieldiana: Zoology 70(3), 29-78.

Hall W.E. (1999) Generic revision of the tribe Nanosellini (Coleoptera: Ptiliidae: Ptiliinae). Transactions of the American Entomological Society 125(1-2), 39-126.

Hansen M. (1997) Phylogeny and classification of the staphyliniform beetle families (Coleoptera). Biologiske Skrifter 48, Det Kongelige Danske Videnskabernes Selskab, Munksgaard, Copenhagen, 339 p.

Sörensson M. (1997) Morphological and taxonomical novelties in the world's smallest beetles, and the first Old World record of Nanosellini (Coleoptera: Ptiliidae). Systematic Entomology 22, 257-283.