Flour beetles of the genus Tribolium have been utilised as informative study systems for over a century and contributed to major advances across many fields. This review serves to highlight the significant historical contribution that Tribolium study systems have made to the fields of ecology and evolution, and to promote their use as contemporary research models. We review the broad range of studies employing Tribolium to make significant advances in ecology and evolution. We show that research using Tribolium beetles has contributed a substantial amount to evolutionary and ecological understanding, especially in the fields of population dynamics, reproduction and sexual selection, population and quantitative genetics, and behaviour, physiology and life history. We propose a number of future research opportunities using Tribolium, with particular focus on how their amenability to forward and reverse genetic manipulation may provide a valuable complement to other insect models.

一个多世纪以来， Tribolium属的面粉甲虫一直被用作信息研究系统，并为许多领域的重大进步做出了贡献。这篇综述旨在强调Tribolium研究系统对生态学和进化领域做出的重大历史贡献，并促进它们作为当代研究模型的使用。我们回顾了使用Tribolium在生态学和进化方面取得重大进展的广泛研究。我们表明使用Tribolium的研究甲虫对进化和生态学的理解做出了大量贡献，特别是在种群动态、繁殖和性选择、种群和数量遗传学以及行为、生理学和生命史等领域。我们提出了一些使用Tribolium的未来研究机会，特别关注它们对正向和反向基因操作的适应性如何为其他昆虫模型提供有价值的补充。