A new species and new records for two other exotic species of Dirrhagofarsus Fleutiaux, 1935 (Coleoptera: Eucnemidae: Melasinae: Dirhagini) in the United States

Authors

Robert L. Otto, 2301 Cypress Way Apt. 22 Madison, WI 53713Follow

ORCID IDs

Robert Otto https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5679-4044

Date of this Version

4-29-2022

Citation

Otto RL. 2022. A new species and new records for two other exotic species of Dirrhagofarsus Fleutiaux, 1935 (Coleoptera: Eucnemidae: Melasinae: Dirhagini) in the United States. Insecta Mundi 0932: 1–15.

Comments

Published on April 29, 2022 by Center for Systematic Entomology, Inc. P.O. Box 141874 Gainesville, FL 32614-1874 USA http://centerforsystematicentomology.org/

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

Abstract

New records for a new species and other exotic Dirrhagofarsus Fleutiaux (Coleoptera: Eucnemidae: Melasinae: Dirhagini) species are reported from throughout much of the northeastern and southern areas of the United States. Dirrhagofarsus brevis, new species, is hereby described in this study. Two other exotic spe­cies, Dirrhagofarsus modestus (Fleutiaux) and Dirrhagofarsus unicolor (Hisamatsu), new country records, are redescribed and diagnosed as they were compared with other Dirrhagofarsus species present in the Nearctic region. All Dirrhagofarsus species in this study are imaged, highlighting essential character states to facilitate better diagnosis in conjunction to the new identification key provided in this study.

The onset of this study began when correspondence was received from Paul J. Johnson regarding questions on an unknown member of Eucnemidae he encountered while identifying elateroid beetles for the United States National Park Service in Virginia. The eucnemid was later identified as a member of Dirrhagofarsus Fleutiaux. Further investigations took place that included examining a number of Dirrhagofarsus specimens taken from the national bark beetle survey conducted by the United States Department of Agriculture which were loaned from the Carnegie Museum of Natural History. Additional specimens of the unknown Dirrhagofarsus were found intermixed within Dirrhagofarsus ernae Otto, Muona and McClarin, along with a series of a second unknown Dirrhagofarsus species. The two unknown Dirrhagofarsus species were later identified using Seung et al. (2018). The two unknown species matched the illustrations and were confirmed to be Dirrhagofarsus modestus (Fleu­tiaux) and Dirrhagofarsus unicolor (Hisamatsu), both of which are newly recorded in the United States. Virginia records for D. modestus were published by Johnson and Steury (2021), but are included in this study. Dirrhagofar­sus modestus has been present in the United States at least a decade before specimens were identified.