It looks like not all Xanthopygina are brightly colored after all

A new paper just came out where Adam Brunke and I describe a new genus and three new species of Xanthopygina rove beetles. What makes this genus different from any other Xanthopygina that I have recently described is they are dull brown, with short elytra and no hind wings (aptery). You can read the whole paper here (open access)

Here is a little bit of background on this paper: many years ago I received a bunch of weird looking rove beetles from Zack Falin at the University of Kansas. Zack is a friend and long term collaborator/enabler of my rove beetle studies. Zack had identified these beetles as Xanthopygina but when I first looked at them, I thought "No way" and left them in a drawer. 

Part of the reason why I am writing this blog post is because sometimes we, taxonomists, tend to ignore some specimens and not wanting really to acknowledge their existence.

I sort of repeated this exercise (look at the beetles, say no way) every year for a a number of years until last year. I am working on the revision of Xanthopygus, a multi-year project and I was looking for another project that I could finish relatively quickly so I can publish a revision before the Xanthopygus one. As I was browsing through the Xanthopygina specimens in my office, I noticed these little beetles again and I started looking at them under the microscope. I hated to admit it but Zack was right, these specimens were Xanthopygina. It also appeared that they did not belong in any of the existing genera currently in Xanthopygina. Last year, Adam and I finished a paper where we produced a phylogenetic tree of all known genera ofd Xanthopygina. So we reran the analyses with a few more morphological characters (there are no molecular data for Ikaros) and you can see the results below. We can definitely say that they do not belong in some lineages but until we get molecular data we wont's be able to say exactly where they belong.

I am particular proud of the etymology for this new genus. As I mentined in the paper: "The word Ikaros is an alternate spelling of the word Icarus, the son of Daedalus who (in the Greek mythology) constructed the Labyrinth. Icarus and Daedalus escaped the Labyrinth by flying with wings made of feathers and glued by wax. However, Icarus flew too close to the sun and the wax melted. The name is rather appropriate for this genus considering these are species found in high altitudes that have lost their wings."    

Then again...

I think I am fairly good in self motivating myself to push through projects to completion. Instead of describing two new genera in a simple Zootaxa-style paper, how about we produce a phylogenetic analysis of Xanthiopygina and add all known genera, including these two new taxa? Sure, it will take a year more or so, but it will keep the engine running.

The thrill is gone

One of the biggest challenges for me is to push through a work to publication, when I have figured everything out. Last week I was on Twitter telling the world about how awesome it feels when you finally figure out something -- a unique characteristic that unites a group a three undescribed taxa into a genus.

That glorious moment when you finally find a unique characteristic for a group of species that you thought belong to a new genus #taxonomy

— Stelio Chatzimanolis (@schatzimanolis) October 18, 2017

But then the thrill is gone. I have figured out that this is a new genus. I know that there are three new species. Now I have to show this to the rest of the world. But by this point there is nothing (or almost nothing) new to be discovered. I just have to spend endless hours taking photos, drawing and writing descriptions to persuade my peer community that these are indeed new taxa. But there is very little personal satisfaction in the process and this can slow down the process a bit.

Two new genera and at least five new species. 

When I was starting out as a graduate student, I was trying to maximize the number of papers I could get and sometimes published papers as"least publishable unit". Now I think I am at the opposite spectrum. Last week I submitted a paper where I was reviewing two genera (Dysanellus and Torobus). And for my next paper I seriously consider putting together a description of two NEW genera together. 

Figuring things out

Recently I published an new paper describing the genus Phanolinopsis and describing four new species. While writing a paper like that is pretty straight forward once you have figured things out, it usually takes a lot of time to figure things out.

Many many years ago I was visiting a natural history museum examining their collection of Xanthopygina beetles. Among the materials was a specimen of Phanolinopsis erythros.

Phanolinopsis erythros Chatzimanolis

I was puzzled. At that time, I was working on the revision of Nordus and Philothalpus and had finished the revision of Elmas. Let just say that my understanding of Xanthopygina was limited. I asked a Very Important Rove beetle systematist at the museum there what they thought of the specimen and they looked at it and said: "Yes, I have examined it, I could not figure it out, I doubt you will".

Well, they were right in a sense, it took me 11 years to figure it out. I guess what I am trying to say is that figuring out things in taxonomy sometimes takes a very long time. So while writing a taxonomic paper is 'easy', deciding what goes in that paper may take a lifetime. I have been lucky to be able to work with Xanthopygina for ~17 years now, so I had the time to "figure things out". But I am afraid, the way we do science nowadays does not usually allow for having that much time of working uninterrupted* on a project or taxonomic group.

On an unrelated note, on the same paper I named a new species after my daughter.

Phanolinopsis norahae Chatzimanolis

* Over the years,  I have worked on other things other than Xanthopygina, from phylogeography to fossils, but I have never stopped looking at these beetles. 

Xenopygus species

Back in November I published a paper in Zootaxa with new species and synonymies for Xenopygus Bernhauer. There are a lot of stories that can be told about this paper and if you are skilled in reading between the lines you can probably guess some by reading the paper itself.

Xenopygus davidi Chatzimanolis

But I want to tell one of the stories here. This is the story of how sometimes we are unable to deal with the backlog of specimens (perhaps data in general) until something happens. For many years I had two new species of Xenopygus awaiting description in my Xanthopygina cabinet. This is not unusual. By a quick count, I probably have ~100 new undescribed species of rove beetles trapped in the cabinet in front of my desk. But taxonomists do not spit out species description despite being urged to do so many times because we want to put these new species into context. That context is typically a revision of a genus, a phylogenetic analysis or fauna checklist.

But back to Xenopygus. I was sitting on these two new species because properly revising the genus meant dealing with thousands of specimens of one of the most common xanthopygine rove beetles, Xenopygus analis. It also meant changing the generic concept of Dysanellus (one of the described species there belonged in Xenopygus). And it also meant dealing with some bad taxonomic decisions made in the 70s-80s.

Xenopygus pycnos Chatzimanolis

So I was waiting until, I do not know, I was ready to deal with them. The Xenopygus manuscript was probably no. 7 in my "in preparation" manuscripts. Well, that changed when Caron et al (2016) published a paper revising Xenopygus. I was not aware of that paper until it came out in Zootaxa. Which was unfortunate, because I would have told Caron et al. about all the problems mentioned above. Caron et al. published two new species that ended up being synonyms of taxa that had been described before. To their defense, it was almost impossible to figure this out unless they had seen photos (or examined) of every single species in Xanthopygina. But on the plus side, they dealt with the revisionary aspects of X. analis and that allow me quickly to publish the two new species and regrettably to synonymize the species they described as new.  

I guess the story here is that we all need motivation in our lives. Sometimes motivation to finish that manuscript comes from places we do not expect.

It’s not a plant!

It started as a joke. For a couple of years it was the number 1 item in my to do list  on the lab whiteboard: “Revision of Smilax”. My botany colleagues would come in and start asking me if I got tired of rove beetles (never!) and wanted to switch to plant systematics. You see, Smilax L. is a cosmopolitan plant genus. My typical response was “It’s not a plant!”

So here it is: Smilax deineinephyto sp. n. described in the recently published revision of Smilax (pdf here), the myrmecophilous rove beetle genus. The epithet translates in Greek “It’s not a plant”.

Sometimes we go collect in a rainforest and come back with many new species, species that we knew in the field that were new. Or, we visit a natural history museum and look through their unsorted specimens and we immediately know that there is a new species there. Well, this is not one of these stories. The funny (or annoying, disturbing, same old -  depending on who you ask) story is that the species I described as new in this paper had actually been illustrated before.

From Scheerpeltz 1936.

Scheerpeltz in his 1936 paper, compared the species of Smilax pilosa with Smilax cyanea (then in Cordylaspis). Unfortunately, it seems that he did not study the type specimens for these taxa because what he identified as Smilax pilosa was (mostly) Smilax lynchi (Bruch). Also the type species for Smilax cyanea is conspecific with Smilax pilosa, and does not match what he illustrated as Smilax cyanea above. And thus, here is a new species, hidden in a collection for several decades, masqueraded as a previously described species.

References

Chatzimanolis, S. 2016. A revision of the myrmecophilous genus Smilax Laporte (Coleoptera: Staphylinidae: Staphylininae). Zootaxa 4162(2): 283-303

Scheerpeltz, O. 1936. Die von Prof. Dr. H. Eidmann gelegentlich seiner im Jahre 1933 nach Brasilien unternommenen Studienreise aufgesammelten Staphyliniden. I. Die in den Nestern von Atta sexdens L. aufgefundenen Staphyliniden, nebst einigen Bemerkungen über die Gattung Scariphaeus Er. Archiv für Naturgeschichte, N.F. 5 (4), 483–540.

Plociopterus ain't no myrmecophile!

In a paper just published in Coleopterists Bulletin (pdf here), Mariana Chani-Posse and I moved two myrmecophilous species of “Xanthopygina” in Philonthina. Both species had been described by Wasmann 1925 in the genus Plociopterus. And so for the last 90 or so years, Plociopterus was known to have two myrmecophilous species. Unfortunately, several authors discussing the origin of myrmecophily in Staphylinidae (or at least specifically for Staphylinini) was using this as an example of independent evolution of myrmecophilous life style. The problem was that nobody had checked the specimens since the original description, because none of those species belonged in Plociopterus. They are Belonuchus (at least until the genus is revised) and for those keeping score at home, this is also the wrong subtribe…

The moral of the story is this: people make mistakes and generic concepts change over time, as well as our understanding or higher level relationships. As I have mentioned earlier, If somebody described a taxon 100 years ago, chances are that this taxon now belongs in a different genus or is a synonym of something else. Using raw data in biodiversity studies without going through the lens of a revision is almost guaranteed to lead to erroneous results.

As a side note, Plociopterus is in terrible need of a revision. There are multiple new species awaiting description and many taxa that have to be placed in synonymy. But the genus has an infamous history among Xanthopygina workers: at least twice people have started its revision (both in the lab of my late PhD advisor, Steve Ashe) and both times people abandoned the effort. Perhaps third time’s the charm?

How do you know a species is new to science?

Students often ask me, how does one go about a describing a new species? It's easy, you just have to know what has been described before! I am kidding, of course. Knowing what has been described before is by far the hardest part of describing a new species.

Here is an example: I work with a group of rove beetles belonging in the subtribe Xanthopygina, a group of 30 or so genera and ~400 species. To be able to describe a new species with confidence, I need to know how all 30 genera and all 400 species look like. Why? Because the generic limits that we recognize today might have been more relaxed in previous years, and species currently in one genus might actually belong in another (this has happened multiple times to me in the past). So if somebody wants to describe new species in e.g. the genus Plociopterus Kraatz, seeing just the existing species in Plociopterus is not good enough. People of course describe like that all the time (or by just finding a species in a "new area"), but this leads to sloppy (at best) taxonomic work.

Over the past few years I have been working with myrmecophile Xanthopygina. One of the most prominent early 20th century myrmecophile entomologist was Wasmann. His collection ended up in Maastricht and this week I was able to finally see all of the Xanthopygina species he described.

This post-it note was glued on my monitor for the last three years. A constant reminder that there were still species described in Xanthopygina that I had not seen. But now this over and I feel much better describing new species that are in or close to Plociopterus. And I have to say, I did get rewarded for insisting to see these species: one of the two  both species described by Wasmann probably belong in a different subtribe altogether.

Revision and new species of Trigonopselaphus

 I recently published the revision of Trigonopselaphus, a genus that includes some of the largest rove beetles known, with sizes ranging from 30-40 mm (trust me, this is huge size for rove beetles). The paper is available here. Previously I had blogged about the loss of the type for one of the species, Trigonopselaphus herculeanus. That species was described by Laporte and was lost in the Smithsonian fire back in the mid 1800s. So, as a good taxonomist that I am, I designated a new type (called a neotype) for that species.

I also described a new species from Ecuador and Peru, named Trigonopselaphus diplopegus. The epithet refers (of course) to the specific structure of the genitalia. But while I was working on this paper, these beetle heads looked oddly familiar.  And finally, a few days ago, I got it: anybody else see the resemblance?

Image of Blue alien head from here http://www.zazzle.com/blue_alien_head_poster-228206002344045167

Maybe little blue aliens do live among us after all. 

Cannibalistic behavior in Ontholestes cingulatus? [Updated]

Few days ago a colleague brought six live specimens of Ontholestes murinus  cingulatus in a jar. I could not deal with them at that time so I let them be. The next morning there were five beetles in the jar and bits and pieces of a sixth one. I quick search on Google did not bring any hits on cannibalism in this species, but I would guess that this is probably rather common for carnivorous species trapped in a small space with no other food resources.

On an unrelated note, I could not find any records of O. murinus (which has its native range in Europe) from TN, at least not in iDigBio, GBIF or Bugguide.net but of course that does not say much. So perhaps this is a first record for the state.  There are records for TN for O. cingulatus from the Smokies, but not from southern TN.

Update: I should point out that the photograph on the right is from a historical specimen (as evident by the "green rust" near the pin).

Update 2: Well, crap. I was wrong, It is not O. murinus but rather O. cingulatus. I was fooled by the dirt on the specimens and did not notice that their legs were bicolored instead of solid black as in the picture....

New species, new characters

Scaponopselaphus diaspartos

I recently described a new species of Xanthopygina rove beetles in the Biodiversity Data Journal (I will write another post later to talk about that experience). The species is Scaponopselaphus diaspartos from Colombia. This is the second species in the genus, the first (S. mutator) described by Sharp long time ago (1876) in the genus Trigonopselaphus. The genus Scaponopselaphus was erected by Scheerpeltz (1972) when he realized that mutator was not similar to the other species in Trigonopselaphus.

The genus is rather easy to tell apart from other Xanthopygina rove beetles thanks to a unique morphological feature: the first tarsomere of the mesotarsus in males has spatulate setae. This is unheard of in other genera of Xanthopygines and that makes it a nice and easy diagnostic feature.

Mesotibia and mesotarsus of S. mutator. Arrow indicates the location of the
 spatulate tibia on mesotarsus. Scale bar = 0.68 mm. 

Spatulate setae are very common on the protarsi of rove beetles, but not so much on meso- or metatarsi.

The epithet of the new species (diaspartos) means "scattered" and refers to the distribution of the peg setae on the ventral side of the paramere. 

Copenhagen ZMUC vist

Just came back Denmark where I had a wonderful time visiting several friends and colleagues (Adam Brunke, Mariana Chani, Andrea Schomann and Alexey Solodovnikov) there. The visit was funded by an RCA grant from UTC and it was really great to spend a week just talking/working with rove beetles. I found many specimens that are going to be used in upcoming revisions and I also had the opportunity to examine the Fabricius collection for Xanthopygina rove beetle. Sometimes it is just nice to be able to spend a week looking at specimens without worrying about all the usual office / life things.

Sabbatical projects

My sabbatical officially starts Monday (first day of classes for the Spring semester), so I decided to put here a list of projects/papers I want to finish by August 1. The main reason for putting these up here, in public, is to try to keep myself honest more than anything else.

So in no particular order:

1. NSF pre proposal submission

This should be straight forward to accomplish, considering that the pre proposal is written. All I have to do is coordinate with the local grants office and get final approvals.

2. Revision of Smilax (not the plant :))

Currently, there are four species in the genus. This is a complicated revision because I have no access to two of the types, for reasons I am not going to address here. But I have accumulated almost all other specimens from museum around the world, and done a lot of the prep work already. Smilax species are myrmecophiles, known to occur in leaf cutter ant nests and there are a lot of bizarre (and potentially belonging to new species) specimens.


3. #365papers

An idea I got online from the twitter feed of Meg Duffy (@duffy_ma) to try to read one (new to me) paper every day. For as much as I am emphasizing the primary literature to my students, it is amazing how many days can go by without reading a paper.






4. Description of a new genus with multiple new species from South America.

This is the taxon listed as "Undescribed" genus in the phylogeny of Chatzimanolis 2014 and potentially the sister group of Isanopus. I have been accumulating materials for three years now and I doubt I could (easily) locate many more specimens without extensive field work. So I am pretty confident that this is the time to describe the taxon.

5. Research trip to Copenhagen

I plan to visit Copenhagen in March to meet many fellow rove beetle systematists. I am really looking forward to this trip because there are a few projects waiting to be finished, several new project/grant ideas to be discussed and cool types in the Fabricius collection to look over. Could I have Skyped in the whole thing? No. One week of one-one interactions is way beyond Skype can offer. Plus, when I travel I tend to focus 100% on the discussion/projects ahead, while staying here does not have the same effect.

6. Review of Phanolinopsis

Currently a monotypic genus but at least two more undescribed species and couple of other species that need to be transferred here from other genera.

7. Allometry in Triacrus?

The question mark here means that I really do not know if this is an actual project. We have taken a lot of measurements and compared males and females but we have not done any statistical analyses yet, so... to be determined I guess. I got the idea for this project when I received a box of ~20 specimens from the Natural History Museum in Vienna with amazing size differences among different males. These are interesting beetles because they are predatory of larvae of wasps and they can only be found in the refuse piles of these wasps.






8. New species in Scaponopselaphus

There are a couple new species in this enigmatic genus from South America. "This should be an easy paper to write". The last time I said that (actually I did not, my graduate advisor did) back in 2000, I ended up describing 17+ new species for a genus I thought there were just one or two more new species to describe.

So here they are, five papers, one research trip and (at least) one grant proposal. Probably overly optimistic. And these are the projects where I am the first author, there are a few others where I have a lesser role and I am not mentioning them here. I will make sure I will report back in August on how I did with all these.

Rediscovering a Darwin specimen

One of the most common questions during the last couple of weeks has been "how did you end up with a Darwin specimen?" The short answer is that I was the right person at the right time.

Here is the long answer: Insect systematists are very specialized scientists. I can identify most beetles to families. I can identify rove beetles (the family Staphylinidae) to the subfamily level and I can identify most Staphylininae (one of the subfamilies of rove beetles) to tribes and subtribes.  I can name almost all species in my taxonomic expertise (the subtribe Xanthopygina) but ask me about subfamilies of Orthoptera or Diptera and I have no clue.

Darwin's statue in BMNH

The Darwin specimen happened to belong to the subtribe Xanthopygina and I guess I was the best person in the world to tell if this was a new species and a new genus.

Back in 2008 my colleague Alexey Solodovnikov (University of Copenhagen) told me that there was a "Darwin Xanthopygine" in the Natural History Museum of London. To be honest, I think I just said "OK" and did not think much about it. Later, I even visited the BMNH and I failed to locate the specimen myself. The thing is, I was not really looking for it. My main goal during that visit was to photograph the vast type collection of Xanthopygina by Sharp. So I was really photographing types and paid little attention to unsorted materials.

Alexey later told me that he had found the Darwin specimen in a box of random unsorted Staphylinidae that included both new and historical materials. Realizing that this is a Xanthopygine, he transferred it to the unsorted materials of the genus Trigonopselaphus, as the best guess on where this specimen might belong. However, at this point neither Alexey, me or anybody at BMNH knew/realized that this specimen was considered lost according to Smith (1987)

Trigonopselaphus sp. 

Fast forward a few years and I have decided to revise the genus Trigonopselaphus (revision is in progress). Typically, one requests all described materials (types) and any unsorted/unidentified materials that belong in that genus. I requested materials from several museums, including BMNH. It was only then that I saw the Darwin specimen and quickly realized that it is a new genus and new species. But it would be another few months before I realized that the specimen was considered lost, while I compiled an inventory of all rove beetle specimens collected by Darwin.

The thing is, it takes a lot of time and preparation to be able to tell if a specimen you see is "new". If I had seen the Darwin specimen in 2004 or 2008, I would have been able to tell that is is a Xanthopygine, but I do not think I would have been able to recognize it as something new. 

Working with a Darwin specimen

Today a paper came out where I describe a new genus and species of rove beetles. The description was based on just two specimens, one from the Natural History Museum, London and one from the Museum für Naturkunde der Humboldt Universität, Berlin. We typically want to have more specimens before we describe a new species. However, I decided to go ahead with the paper for two reason (1) I have been visiting major (accessible) entomological collections for more than 12 years and I have not seen other specimens and (2) one of the specimens was collected by Darwin himself!

Below is a photograph of the holotype of the new species, Darwinilus sedarisi Chatzimanolis.

Image Copyright, The Natural History Museum, London.

The Darwin specimen was collected in 1832 and there are traces of (non water-soluble) glue on the ventral side of the specimen. You undoubtedly noticed that the specimen is "dirty".  I did not attempt to "clean" it, either physically or post processing (i.e., in Photoshop). I was both in awe and scared to death handling the specimen, so I really tried to minimize time spent handling it. To dissect the genitalia I followed the steam method described by Beulah Garner (curator of Coleoptera in the Natural History Museum, London). But I did not attempt to relax the mouthparts of move the legs, a standard practice on more recent specimens, as I did not want to press my luck.  

Here is a close up of the head, where all the dust is visible in exquisite detail:

Image Copyright, The Natural History Museum, London.

I know I could have very easily cleaned the specimen with a fine paintbrush. But in a specimen as old as this, who am I to say that the dust does not belong there, especially when it does not affect the specimen description?  In a later post I will write about how I stumble upon the specimen. 

Dumpster diving xanthopygine rove beetles

Let's face it, a lot of beetles are associated with ants. But few go to the extremes that rove beetles go to make themselves at home with the ants. Many rove beetles not only look like ants, they also smell like ants. If you want to see some really cool, yet ultimately bizarre beetles, I suggest you read the blog post by Joe Parker and Taro Eldredge on Pselaphinae and Aleocharinae myrmecophiles.

A few xanthopygine rove beetles are known to be associated with ants but these beetles are typically found on ant refuse piles (=dumpsters). The refuse piles are nutrient-rich, thriving micro-communities that support many types of arthropods, fungi and bacteria. Most rove beetles are there to feed on the fly larvae but we really do not know the details. Navarrete-Heredia (2001)* lists 65 genera (148 species) of rove beetles associated with leaf cutter ants, either Atta or Acromyrmex. Several xanthopygine beetles made the list, including species from the genera Glenus, Paraxenopygus, Tricholinus, Scariphaeus, Smilax and Plociopterus.

Glenus jelskii Solsky is known from refuge piles of Atta sexdens (Scheerpeltz 1936)

One striking feature of all these xanthopygines is that they are good-looking beetles. I would have expected that an insect hiding in a refuge pile would be dull-colored (why spend energy on coloration?) but most of these have shining metallic colorations with bright yellows and reds. Not sure if this is a plesiomorphic characteristic (most xanthopygines have impressive metallic coloration) or if there is an adaptive significance of the coloration.

Some xanthopygines take their Hymenoptera associations one step further: they are known from debris piles of wasps and stingless bees. One of largest (almost 3 cm) known xanthopygine rove beetle, Triacrus dilatus, is known from the debris piles of the wasp Stenopolybia Agelaia vicina (Wasmann 1902).

Triacrus dilatus Nordmann

A couple more species, Xanthopygus cyanipennis and Xenopygus analis have been recorded from the nest of Trigona clavipes (a stingless bee) (Luderwalt 1917), although both of these instances might be accidental/opportunistic. Xenopygus analis is extremely widespread (Mexico to Brazil, introduced in Hawaii) and will feed on anything. A while back I posted a video clip of X. analis eating rotting Gustavia superba fruits.

A lot of cool work remaining to be done here, both systematic and ecological, to understand these associations and map the evolution of these behaviors.


*Thanks to Adam Brunke for providing some of these references.

References

Luderwalt H (1917) Biologishes uber brasilianische Staphyliniden. Z. Wiss. Insektenbiol. 13: 44-47

Navarrete-Heredia JL (2001) Beetles associated with Atta and Acromyrmex ants (Hymenoptera: Formicidae: Attini). Transactions of the American Entomological Society 127(3): 381-429.

Scheerpeltz O (1936) Die von Prof. Dr. H. Eidmann gelegentlich seiner im Jahre 1933 nach Brasilien unternommenen Studienreise aufgesammelten Staphyliniden. I. Die in den Nestern von Atta sexdens L. aufgefundenen Staphyliniden, nebst einigen Bemerkungen uber die Gattung Scariphaeus Er. Archiv fur Naturgeschichte (N.F.), 5, 483–540.

Wasmann E (1902) Riesige Kurzflügler als Hymenopteren-Gäste. (132 Beitrag zur Kenntniss der Myrmekiphilen und Termitophilen.). Insektenborse 19: 267–268, 275–276, 282.

Beeria nematocera: The most interesting rove beetle in the world*^

A few months back I was asked to identify some Staphylinini specimens from Prince of Wales island in Alaska by Derek Sikes. If I remember correctly there were a lot of Atrecus and Quedius (pretty boring things for a neotropical rove beetle guy like me who is used to beetles like this) but one specimen made the whole sorting worthwhile:

I present to you Beeria nematocera (Casey). The species was first described by Casey who described it in Philothus from some specimens collected in the Pacific Northwest. Later Smetana (1977, paper behind paywall) transfered the species in its own genus and for a long time it was considered a "hybrid" between Philothina and Quediina. 

The species is extremely rare in collections (I will be shocked if there are more than 10 worldwide) and I know that several rove beetle systematists have sampled the type locality without being able to collect any specimens. The specimen I received was collected by Derek and students in a pitfall trap and the habitat looked like this:

Photo by D. Sikes. Original photograph here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/alaskaent/5155883864/in/set-72157625334180410

Yeah, good luck collecting Beeria down there without a trap. 

The detailed record for the specimen can be found on the Arctos database that Derek maintains at the Museum of the North (love the name by the way), University of Alaska here and here.

A recent morphological phylogenetic analysis of Staphylinini (Brunke and Solodovnikov 2013, paper behind paywall) placed Beeria as the sister group of 'Staphylinini propria' ("Anisolinina", Staphylinina, Xanthopygina, and Philonthina). However, the particular position on the tree may be an artifact due to the lack of proper morphological characters to clearly identify the sister group of Beeria. I mean, look at the huge postcoxal process here (yellow arrow):

Now, can I have some DNA quality specimens please? 

* where 'interesting' means we have no clue where it belongs phylogenetically and I really want it for DNA work, and 'the world' really is North America here.
^ whoa, people are very geographically sensitive. I am not implying here that "the world" is North America; I was just paraphrasing the "most interesting man in the world" commercial...

The limits of morphology

I was told early on as a graduate student that an insect taxonomist should "kill first, ask questions later" during fieldwork. This was usually said in the context that you might lose a rare specimen if you spend time looking at it, rather than putting in a vial. I am here to tell you that I have deeply regretted following that advice.

Every single time I am working on a taxonomic paper I catch myself having the same wish: "I wish I had seen these specimens alive, just to get a glimpse of how they are using these structures." Morphology can tell us a lot of things but sometimes a dead insect hold its secrets very well.

Exhibit A: In a paper published in 2005, Steve Ashe and I revised the genus Philothalpus. These are striking beetles with questionable taxonomic affinities (at least according to DNA).

Philothalpus brooksi

Abdominal sternum VII

Males in this genus have a perplexing structure (indicted by a white arrow on the figure above) on the ventral side of their abdomen, specifically on the 7th abdominal sternum. Back then we called it a "porose structure". Truth is, we have no idea what it is. A hole on the body with setae around it. Only males have it. But how do they use it? I have no clue. I guess I will be inclined to accept the notion that is used in male/female interactions since it is only present in males but, boy, if only I had seen these guys alive...

The example above came to mind when I recently examined a species (in another genus) with a similar structure:

Exhibit B:

 The structure is present in the same abdominal segment (VII) but it is clearly different than the one above. Are these structures homologous?  Are they used for the same purpose? Morphology cannot answer these questions. Sure, we can do fancy evo-devo here, but that requires live specimens, identifying conserved developmental genes and so on.

What we really need is good old basic natural history observations that can solve these problems. But "kill first, ask questions later" attitudes really do not help. So, next time you are in the field, jot down some observations before you kill those insects.

A little monster from Paraguay

Long time no blog post. Well, the fall semester is here and I plan to reactivate this site. It has been pretty dormant this summer due to my travels and other joyful and not-so-joyful moments in my life over the the past few months.

I figured we will start with something impressive, the species shown below is Gastrisus nobilis (Wendeler) although the species certainly does not belong in Gastrisus. it is actually a member of a new genus (along with several other species) soon to be submitted for publication in Zootaxa. Average length of these guys is ~ 15 mm and like so many other rove beetles, really nothing is known about their biology.

Do xanthopygine rove beetles eat fruit?

It's been a long time since the last post, but I was out for good reasons: end of the semester craziness, grading a mountain of exams, working for a three letter (scientific) government agency and on top of all  these a sick child. Now I need to start the paper writing machine for the summer.

I have been uploading several video clips of rove beetles on figshare and you can see many of those here Almost all of those are from my graduate school days and were shot on Barro Colorado Island in Panama, either in 2000 or 2001. I used some of the data to write a paper on Nordus fungicola natural history (a link to the paper is here).

Here is a clip of another Xanthopygine rove beetle (Xenopygus analis) munching on rotten Gustavia superba fruits. Almost all xanthopygine rove beetles are considered to be carnivorous, but I guess there are always exceptions out there.

                                             http://dx.doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.693731

Here is a more typical example of feeding behavior,  a male Nordus fungicola stealing a prey item from an ant (no idea what this is) and then proceeding to chew (technically speaking, this is extra oral digestion) the fly larva.