New Burmese Amber Rove Beetle Fossils Assigned to the Rare Extant Subfamily Coomaniinae (Coleoptera: Staphylinidae).

The Mesozoic, ca. 99-million-year-old Burmese amber is an incredible source of fossil beetles that have been very actively studied in recent times and have already significantly improved our knowledge about the evolution of the large family of Staphylinidae, the rove beetles. Nevertheless, new extinct taxa of high phylogenetic interest are being discovered, among which the following three rove beetle species are described here: Coomania megistos sp. nov., Coomania enkarsios sp. nov. and Coomania yini sp. nov. These fossils preserved enough morphological characters to be identified as members of the rove beetle lineage formed by Staphylininae and allied subfamilies. Based on the fragments of morphology available for observation, they are hypothesized to be the extinct members of the extant rare monobasic subfamily Coomaniinae, sister to the recently mega-diverse and abundant Staphylininae. Limitations of the available fossil material prompted us to place the new species in the extant, monobasic genus Coomania Cameron, 1939, pending a more refined generic placement when more characters become available via additional material or advanced examination techniques. The odd morphology and rarity of the extant members of Coomaniinae restricted to Southeast Asia and Northern Australia make them an enigmatic subfamily among the hyper-diverse Staphylinidae. The newly described fossils, albeit without sufficient details concealed by imperfect preservation, shed some light on the past diversity of Coomaniinae and its divergence from Staphylininae.

A New Termitophilous Genus of Paederinae Rove Beetles (Coleoptera, Staphylinidae) from the Neotropics and Its Phylogenetic Position.

We describe a new genus and species of Paederinae rove beetles, Ruptor cordatus gen. et sp. nov., which lives in the arboreal nests of the termite Labiotermes labralis (Holmgren, 1906) in the Amazon lowlands of Peru. The morphology of Ruptor gen. nov. is highly derived, apparently due to its close association with the termite host, and thus, morphologically, the genus cannot be classified further than Lathrobiini incertae sedis. In order to address the sister-group relationships of Ruptor gen. nov., we conducted a molecular phylogenetic analysis based on seven gene fragments. The analysis indeed resolved the genus as a member of the tribe Lathrobiini and placed it nested within the informal clade of 'Medonina and allied taxa'. We provide a morphological comparison of the new genus with all known myrmeco- and termitophilous representatives of the subfamily, and to the extent possible, we illustrate other relevant and poorly known Neotropical Paederinae inquilines.

The Relationship between Genus/Species Richness and Morphological Diversity among Subfamilies of Jewel Beetles.

A positive correlation between the species richness and morphological diversity of some organisms has been found in almost all studies at the local community scale. However, this documented relationship has not always been consistent because of diverse niches and the status of an organism in an ecosystem. Global taxon sampling, new morphological approaches, and consideration of more taxonomic categories other than species level are possible methods to further investigate this contradiction. In this study, we proposed a new paradigm for higher taxa biodiversity analysis based on a cosmopolitan dataset. A total of 1106 species from around the world representing all subfamilies and 33% genera of Buprestidae (jewel beetles) were selected to test the correlation between morphological diversity (MD) and genus/species richness (GR/SR) among subfamilies. The MD was quantified by the contours of the pronotum and elytron in dorsal view based on a geometric morphometric approach. The positive correlation between MD and GR was found in all test combinations, but was irrelevant in the species-level test. Interestingly, the correlation between MD and GR was higher than MD and SR in both pronotum and elytron measurements. Additionally, the MD of the pronotum is obviously higher than the MD of the elytron. Our results demonstrate that the geometric morphometric approach could quite accurately reveal diversity patterns of the family Buprestidae. Future studies on different groups, using more characters, more analyses and detailed biological interpretations, are required to fully understand the relationship between MD and SR.

The Oldest Representative of the Rove Beetle Tribe Pinophilini (Coleoptera: Staphylinidae: Paederinae), from Upper Cretaceous Burmese Amber.

The recently reviewed subtribe Procirrina comprises eight extant genera with a predominately (sub)tropical distribution. Previous phylogenies consistently recover the tribe Pinophilini of the subfamily Paederinae monophyletic. No fossils of the tribe have been described, although compression fossils are known from the Cenozoic Green River Formation (50.3-46.2 Ma) as well as inclusions from the Miocene Dominican (20.43-13.65 Ma) and Mexican (20-15 Ma) ambers. Here we describe †Cretoprocirrus trichotos Jenkins Shaw and Zyla gen. et sp. n., the oldest fossil representative of the tribe Pinophilini, from Upper Cretaceous Burmese amber (ca. 99 Ma). Phylogenetic analyses of morphological data allow its unambiguous placement in the subtribe Procirrina. †Cretoprocirrus trichotos is the second genus of Paederinae described from Burmese amber and provides an important insight into the evolution of the subfamily.