| Summary: | Summary: The immature stages of holometabolous insects are traditionally less studied than the adults. Albeit this neglect could be explained by the still unsatisfactory knowledge of adults, it is clear, that we lose a considerable amount of information on bionomy, ecology and also phylogeny of insects due to this constant ignorance. The thesis focuses on the immature stages of the very popular and widely known group of Scarab beetles (Coleoptera: Scarabaeidae), more precisely on the "pleurostict" or phytophagous scarab beetle clade, e.g. on larvae of various chafers, rhinoceros beetles or flower beetles. The work consists of three papers already published in international journals, one manuscript prepared for submission and a general introductory chapter focusing on the problematic aspects of scarab beetles phylogeny and the study of the immature stages of scarabs. As mentioned above, the Scarab beetles represent a widely know group of insects. Despite being so popular, the group is everything else but well studied (probably with the exception of alpha-taxonomical level), which is best demonstrated by the absence of a broadly accepted phylogenetical hypothesis of the whole group. In the first two papers included into the thesis we focused on the phylogenetic relationships within the group Cetoniinae (with...
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