Web Animated Tutorial on Larviforms and their impact on Coleopterology
JM Cicero

Neoteny Paedomorphosis (retention of formerly juvenile characters by adult descendants) produced by retardation of somatic development.
Hypermorphosis The phyletic extension of ontogeny beyond its ancestral termination (usually to larger body sizes and increased complexity of differentiating organs)--producing recapitulation as a result because ancestral adult stages are now intermediate stages of a lengthened descendant ontogeny. (Gould 1977)

The metamorphic instar creates the illusion that adult beetles are ontogenetically equivalent to each other, and for this reason, characters have always been compared between them as objects for taxonomic diagnoses. Their lower taxonomy is probably largely correct and not in dispute here, however, the ontogenetic equivalence tacitly granted to the term "imaginal" is. Larviform morphology indicates that 'neoteny' and 'hypermorphosis' are broadly applicable to the Order, or at least they were at one time in its phylogeny, and therefore the methodology used to assemble the higher taxonomy needs to include them. The metamorphic instar also complicates the application of these and other classical terms; as will be seen, the definitions of Gould do not satisfy the larviform phenomenon. But, as terminology is not at issue here, they will be used. Details follow Cicero (1988)

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

Microphotus dilatatus Leconte