Horaeomorphus Schaufuss
Creators: name: Jałoszyński, Paweł
Publisher: name: Zenodo
Year: 2014
Subjects: Biodiversity
Taxonomy
Animalia
Arthropoda
Insecta
Coleoptera
Staphylinidae
Horaeomorphus

description: Horaeomorphus Schaufuss
Horaeomorphus Schaufuss, 1889: 21. Type species: Horaeomorphus eumicroides Schaufuss, 1889 (orig. des.). Anthicimorphus Franz, 1975: 175 syn. n. (as subgenus of Euconnus; not as new). Type species: Phagonophana anthicoides Lea, 1915 (monotypy). Also spelled Anticimorphus (Franz 1975: 303), selected as incorrect original spelling by Newton & Franz (1998). Franz (1975) referred to Madagascan Anthicimorphus, evidently having in mind a paper that has appeared in print much later (Franz 1986b), but presumably was supposed to be published as first.
Anthicimorphus Franz, 1986b: 234 (as a new subgenus of Euconnus). Type species: Euconnus anthiciformis Franz, 1986b (preoccupied, nec Franz, 1967) (des. orig.).
Revised diagnosis. Body (Figs. 1–5, 22–23, 26–28) strongly elongate; head (Figs. 1–5, 22–23, 26–28) distinctly flattened, with vertex not projecting dorsocaudad, its posterior margin arcuate and distinctly concave; supraantennal tubercles prominent and in most cases accompanied posteriorly by a pair of shallow but distinct pits; frontoclypeal suture or groove absent; eyes located anteriorly and therefore tempora long and strongly curved toward occipital constriction; tempora, genae and postgenae with sparse and short thick bristles mostly located lateroventrally; 'neck region' (Fig. 6) distinctly demarcated from anterior part of head capsule by constriction and much narrower than vertex; hypostomal ridges (Fig. 6; hr) extending from cardines to posterior tentorial pits (Fig. 6; ptp), which are elongate and located on anterior margin of transverse groove demarcating 'neck' ventrally; submentum (Fig. 6; smn) without lateral sutures; each mandible with two subapical teeth (Fig. 8; sat) and densely setose submedian mesal prostheca (Fig. 8; pst); maxillary palpomeres III and IV (Fig. 9; mxp3–4) slender, strongly elongate; antennae (Figs. 1–5, 22–23, 26–28) gradually thickening distally; pronotum (Figs. 1–5, 22–23, 26–28) with odd (three or five) number of antebasal pits (Fig. 10; lp, mp) often connected by transverse groove (Fig. 10; tg); prosternum laterally demarcated from hypomera by pronotosternal sutures (Fig. 11; nss), with distinct prosternal process (Fig. 11; psp) developed as low and narrow carina; procoxal sockets (Fig. 11; pcs) broadly closed; prothoracic hypomera (Fig. 11; hy) with large internal (adcoxal) parts demarcated laterally by complete hypomeral ridges (Fig. 11; hyr); sides of pronotum (Fig. 11) with short and sparse thick bristles mostly located lateroventrally; mesoventrite with strikingly long asetose and reticulated anterior ridge (Fig. 15; ar) with posterior median projection; mesoventral process (Fig. 15; msvp) narrow and weakly expanding ventrally but distinct and clearly separating mesocoxae; ventro- and dorsolateral foveae absent; anterior metaventral process absent; metaventral intercoxal process (Figs. 18–19; mtvp) narrowly separating metacoxae, with two long spines and deep median notch; each elytron with two distinct and asetose basal foveae (Fig. 17; bef) connected by inversely Ushaped groove located on basal articulating lobe of elytron; aedeagus (Figs. 21, 29–36) with free and slender parameres (Fig. 21; pm); spermatheca sclerotized and globular.
Remarks. Although Horaeomorphus is highly diverse and includes species small and large, flattened and strongly convex, with the pronotum strongly elongate or nearly circular, with or without antebasal transverse groove, yet with some experience it is easy to identify the genus even without examining the ventral characters. Independently of the variable body shape, the general shape of the head is nearly identical in all species of Horaeomorphus: always flattened, with the vertex never projecting dorsocaudad and its posterior margin concave; the bristles on tempora, genae and postgenae are sparse and inconspicuous in dry-mounted specimens, visible only in transparent mounts under high magnifications of a compound microscope; the supraantenal tubercles always prominent and in nearly all species accompanied posteromesally by a pair of distinct pits (absent only in H. calcarifer (Franz) and barely discernible in some specimens of H. sarawakensis Franz (Jałoszyński 2012a)). All Australian specimens seen by the author have these pits. Another unique character of Horaeomorphus is the inversely U-shaped groove connecting a pair of basal foveae on each elytron; the groove extends from each fovea anteriorly onto the elytral articulating lobe overlapped by the pronotal base, but is usually partly visible in intact specimens. Many species of Horaeomorphus show a distinct sexual dimorphism, frequently expressed in elongated metatrochanters of males, sometimes to such extent that the distal part of trochanter forms a long rod-like projection exceeding half length of femur (examples are shown in Figs. 2, 4–5, and details in Fig. 20). In two species males differ from females in metafemora with a small ventral tooth. Australian species, at least those known from males, do not have any modifications of the legs.
A character previously unknown was discovered during the present study. Horaeomorphus sakishimanus has the mesocoxae with dense and relatively long setae on the dorsal surface (Figs. 12–13), and bunches of two-nine setae are inserted on small papillae (Fig. 14). Examination of 15 species of Oriental Horaeomorphus (cPJ) revealed that all of them have densely setose dorsal surface of mesocoxae. Among Australian Cyrtoscydmini bunches of setae on the dorsal surface of mesocoxae were found only in Scydmaenozila gen. n. (Fig. 66), but in this genus there are two groups of setae, each seta inserted separately, the surface of coxa is not papillate, and there are numerous pores visible on the coxal cuticle.
Composition and distribution. Thirty-nine species (including those redescribed and described in the present paper) can be unambiguously placed in Horaeomorphus. Thirty six are Asian (Oriental, Himalayan and Far Eastern), one Melanesian (from Fiji) and two Australian. Numerous additional undescribed species were seen by the author, mostly represented by unidentifiable females, from SE Asia (including the Indonesian New Guinea), and two more undescribed species (known from females) occur in Australia. Australian findings (Fig. 193) are located near the eastern coastline and fill a distributional gap between SE Asia / New Guinea and eastern Melanesia.
description: Published as part of Jałoszyński, Paweł, 2014, ' The curse of Horaeomorphus ': taxonomy of misplaced Australian Cyrtoscydmini (Coleoptera: Staphylinidae: Scydmaeninae), pp. 1-76 in Zootaxa 3828 (1) on pages 7-8, DOI: 10.11646/zootaxa.3828.1.1, http://zenodo.org/record/286513