Compared to the first edition several updates have been made to family-group names, 47 new species have been added to the main list, and 9 species have been removed. The third edition includes a chapter on fossil beetles
Checklist of Beetles of the British Isles is a comprehensive checklist of beetles recorded from Great Britain and Ireland, including the Isle of Man, but not the Channel Islands. It contains a comprehensive listing of subfamilies, genera, and species. Since publication of the Coleoptera volume of the second edition of Kloet & Hincks' checklist of British insects (Pope, 1977), a large number of additions and deletions to the list have been published, as well as numerous nomenclatural changes. In addition, recent advances in our understanding of the phylogeny of Coleoptera have led to major modifications of higher classification in checklists and catalogues that have been published more recently in Europe and North America, in the absence of any widely accepted, modem checklist of the British fauna, British workers have been using binomial names taken from a variety of often conflicting sources.
The checklist aims to include all species that have been reliably recorded from the British Isles as possible residents. Exotic species which are only known from importation, and have never formed established populations, are listed in an appendix. The checklist aims to be comprehensive in its listing of subfamilies, genera and species. Tribes and subtribes are only listed when supported by a recent, authoritative review. Contemporary checklists vary in the extent to which they include subgenera and many subgeneric classifications are old and in need of review. Consequently, subgenera have only been listed when they enjoy current and widespread usage.
It is intended that this checklist should have a wider currency and be suitable for use in future conservation reviews, survey reports and taxonomic dictionaries for biological recording. It is, therefore, vital that the nomenclature used should be widely accepted by coleopterists working on the British fauna. It is also important that the checklist should be as useful as possible to those working at larger scales ranging from European through Palaearctic to the world fauna. It is envisaged that the checklist will be updated regularly to keep abreast of published changes and suggested amendments from correspondents.