Among beetles, the superfamily Scarabaeoidea is one of the most emblematic. Besides scarabs in the strict sense, which are primarily coprophagous beetles, the flagship species of which is the Egyptian Scarab, it includes various well-known groups such as cockchafers and rose chafers.

The Cetoniidae form a family widely distributed throughout the world and include some spectacular insects. Its center of diversification is the African continent, which is home to nearly half of the species described to date, including the very spectacular Goliath beetle, one of the largest beetles on Earth and undoubtedly the largest flying beetle in Africa.

The "African Scarabaeoidea Platform" project is an initiative co-developed by the IRD and its partners in Central Africa, particularly the UMMISCO International Joint Research Unit and the University of Yaoundé 1, as well as the LIFT (Yaoundé) and "Planète Cétoines" associations.

The "African Scarabaeoidea Platform" is a tool for managing and disseminating data from the literature and insect collections carried out in the field.

The purpose of this database is to make taxonomic and biogeographical information on African Scarabaeoidea beetles available to the public. The first phase of this platform focuses on the Cetoniidae, Orphninae, and Hybosoridae families of Africa and will be extended to other families. It can be expanded to other geographical regions as needed.

We are sharing with you this platform which features search tools tailored to each item (taxa, citation, bibliography, methods of capture, uses, plants, harvests, photos) and a dynamic map for visualizing the geographical distribution of specimens collected in the field.

The characteristics of this database can be viewed under the statistics tab.

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