This is, as yet, an unsupported and unofficial collaboration of Mexican, U.S. and European colleagues who share a common interest in Buprestidae. All are invited to participate and contribute. If you would like to participate or be involved, simply send an email and your name will be added.

The beetle family Buprestidae, known as jewel, or metallic wood-boring, beetles, is the eighth largest family in the order Coleoptera.  The fauna of North America, north of Mexico is very well known with 762 species in 53 genera.  A checklist of these species is being developed on the web.

The fauna of this family in Mexico is much less well-known, although it has been the focus of significant attention by several U.S.-based workers in recent years. With the collaboration of several new Mexican colleagues, we believe a real binational effort to fully understand the Mexican Buprestidae is possible. A preliminary checklist of Mexican species is already available, and under construction herein.

Our plan is to produce a catalog of the Mexican Buprestidae, which can be distributed in any of three different formats: printed, CD Rom, or on the web.  The production of this catalogue may be developed using one of the relatively new software taxonomic database releases, e.g. Platypus, from the Australian Biological Resource Study, Canberra, or Linnaeus, from the Expert Center for Taxonomic Identification, Amsterdam.