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.

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.

Ten facts about rove beetles

I wrote a small blog post hosted by Christopher Buddle at Expiscor.  The post is about what I thought were 10 really cool things about rove beetles. Go read it here.

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.