Phyllobaenus thomasi and P. turnbowi, two new species from Mexico and Belize (Coleoptera: Cleridae: Hydnocerinae: Hydnocerini)

Authors

John M. Leavengood, Jr., USDA APHIS Plant Protection and QuarantineFollow

Date of this Version

12-25-2020

Citation

Leavengood JM Jr. 2020. Phyllobaenus thomasi and P. turnbowi, two new species from Mexico and Belize (Coleoptera: Cleridae: Hydnocerinae: Hydnocerini). Insecta Mundi 0833: 1–6.

Michael C. Thomas Festschrift Contribution

Comments

Copyright held by the author(s). This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons, Attribution Non-Commercial License,

Published on December 25, 2020 by Center for Systematic Entomology, Inc. P.O. Box 141874 Gainesville, FL 32614-1874 USA http://centerforsystematicentomology.org/

Abstract

The two new species Phyllobaenus thomasi (Campeche, Oaxaca, Quintana Roo and Yucatán, Mexico, and Belize) and P. turnbowi (San Luis Potosi, Mexico), are described (Coleoptera: Cleridae: Hydnocerinae: Hydnocerini). The primary types are photographed and intrageneric relationships of the species are discussed.

Recent nomenclatural and descriptive work by Leavengood (2014), Leavengood and Garner (2014), Barr (2018) and Leavengood and Rifkind (2020) have made changes to the approximately 120 described species of New World Hydnocerini (i.e., Phyllobaenus Dejean, Isohydnocera Chapin and Wolcottia Chapin). Over 100 of these species comprise the genus Phyllobaenus. Mexico and Central America are home to about half of the described species and most of the known undescribed species of Phyllobaenus (pers. obs.). Many of these species exhibit significant intraspecific variation in color pattern and occur across broad geographic ranges, making species delimitation difficult without large specimen series even after accounting for type specimens. The purpose of this paper is to describe two new species of Phyllobaenus from specimens collected in central and southern Mexico and Belize. These new species appear to be rarely collected compared to other species of Phyllobaenus, which are often collected in large series. In my review of the genus (spanning a decade) and examination of over twenty thousand specimens from over 100 collections, only 15 and 7 specimens respectively, have been collected of these two new species with the entire series of one species being collected during a single collecting trip in 1982. These two species are herein named after their collectors, Michael C. Thomas and Robert H. Turnbow, Jr., two exceptional coleopterists who shared a long friendship and a rich history of field work.