Researchers Discover Three New Species of Rove Beetles from New Zealand
Pseudostenosagola wellingtonensis (top) and Pseudostenosagola solodovnikovi (bottom).
At the 2013 Annual Meeting of the Southeastern Branch of the Entomological Society of America, Louisiana State University entomologists Jong-Seok Park and Christopher Carlton presented a poster describing their discovery of a new genus and three new species of New Zealand endemic pselaphine staphylinid beetles belonging to the supertribe Faronitae.
Now their research has been published in the Annals of the Entomological Society of America.
The new genus is called Pseudostenosagola, and the new species are Pseudostenosagola coromandelensis Park and Carlton, Pseudostenosagola wellingtonensis Park and Carlton, and Pseudostenosagola solodovnikovi Park and Carlton.
The genus was named Pseudostenosagola because of its superficial similarity to the genus Stenosagola Broun. P. coromandelensis and P. wellingtonensis were named after the towns where they were found (Coromandel and Wellington), and P. solodovnikovi was named after A. Solodovnikov, the collector of the holotype.
The new genus may be separated from other faronite genera by the following combination of characters, according to the authors: “smaller size, last three antennomeres weakly clubbed; head at least twice longer than wide, frontal sulcus narrow or linear at apex, and circular or drop-shaped basally; prosternum longer than wide, with median procoxal fovea and lateral procoxal fovea; hind wing reduced to small pad; meso- and metaventrite with promesocoxal fovea; tergite and ventrite VI distinctly larger than V and VII.”
The new genus brings the number of faronine genera known from New Zealand to four. The tribe currently includes 287 species described or known as undescribed species, or about 36% of the total New Zealand pselaphine species fauna.
Read more at:
– Pseudostenosagola, a New Genus From New Zealand (Coleoptera: Staphylinidae: Pselaphinae: Faronitae)
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Regarding Pseudostenosagola coromandelensis: it was a bad call to name it after the supposed type locality (Coromandel) and select as the holotype one of only two specimens labelled as being from Coromandel (both from the same litter sample collected by Graeme Ramsay). All other specimens (about a dozen) are from Nelson in the South Island, and the genus is otherwise not known from north of Wellington. It would have been prudent to select a Nelson specimen as holotype! Graeme Ramsay collected litter samples at that time from all over N.Z., and I have seen other evidence that some samples are mislabelled. I therefore strongly suspect that the supposed Coromandel sample is really from Nelson.