Stephanopachys ambericus Zahradník et Háva, 2015

Legalov, Andrei A., Vasilenko, Dmitry V. & Perkovsky, Evgeny E., 2024, Stephanopachys ambericus Zahradník et Háva, 2015 (Coleoptera: Bostrichidae) from Eocene Danish amber and Baltic amber from Latvia in collection of the Natural History Museum of Denmark, Ecologica Montenegrina 71, pp. 112-119 : 113-119

Stephanopachys ambericus Zahradník et Háva, 2015

( Figs. 1-4 )

Material: NHMD-116342, Libau, Min[eral] mus[eum] 1940-10 Baltic amber, late Eocene; NHMD-116341, 16-5/1957 G. V. Hennigsen, Danish amber, late Eocene.

Diagnosis. Body black-brown, glabrous. Head spherical, without paired ocelli. Mandibles large. Eyes large, finely faceted. Frons flattened, without erect setae. Antennae 10-segmented. First and second antennomeres elongate-conical. Third–fifth antennomeres conical. Sixth and seventh antennomeres broadly conical. Antennal club distinct, consists of antennomeres eight to ten, shorter than antennomeres 2-7 combined. Pronotum about 1.2 times as long as wide at apex and at base, about 0.9 times as long as wide across midlength. Maximum width across midlength. Pronotal disk convex, densely granulate. Lateral sides rounded. Basal part of pronotum with prominent, protruding papillae. Scutellar shield subrectangular, about 0.7 times as long as wide. Elytra suboval, about 2.4 times as long as pronotum, about 2.3 times as long as wide at base and about 1.8 times as long as wide across midlength. Elytral intervals weakly convex. Distances between punctures on elytra about as narrow as half their diameters. Elytral declivity absent. Metepisternum about 10 times as long as wide across midlength. First ventrite about 1.8 times as long as length of metacoxal cavity. Second ventrite about 0.9 times as long as first ventrite. Third ventrite about 0.9 times as long as second ventrite. Fourth ventrite equal in length to third ventrite. Fifth ventrite about 0.7 times as long as fourth ventrite. Femur partially separated from coxa. Protibia with apical spine. Tarsi long. Metatarsi: first tarsomere slightly longer than second tarsomere; second tarsomere slightly longer than third tarsomere; fourth tarsomere about 0.6 times as long as third tarsomere; fifth tarsomere about 7.0 times as long as fourth tarsomere, slightly longer than first to fourth tarsomeres combined. Total body length 2.9 mm.

Remarks. The specimens belong to the family Bostrichidae based on the nonpseudotetramerous tarsi, the absence of the paired ocelli, and the femur partially separated from the coxa. Protibia with one apical spine and first tarsomere subequal to second one indicate placement in the subfamily Dinoderinae . The specimens are placed in the genus Stephanopachys Waterhouse, 1888 since the antennal club is shorter than combined length of the antennomeres 2-7. We consider the studied specimens Stephanopachys ambericus Zahradník et Háva, 2015 since the distance between the elytral punctures is approximately equal to half puncture diameter, the lateral sides of the pronotum slightly rounded, the body glabrous, and the antennae consist of ten antennomeres.

Discussion

The oldest known Bostrichidae , Stephanopachys vetus Peris, Delclòs et Perrichot, 2014 , is described from mid-Cretaceous French amber ( Peris et al. 2014). Specific auger beetle fauna was discovered in Cenomanian Burmese amber. Eleven species from the subfamily Alitrepaninae known only from this amber ( Legalov 2018; Peng et al. 2022; Legalov & Háva 2022; Háva & Legalov 2023 a, 2023b) and one representative of the subfamily Polycaoninae ( Legalov & Hava 2020) was also reported. Two species of auger beetles, S. electron Zahradník et Háva, 2015 and S. ambericus Zahradník et Háva, 2015 , were found in late Eocene Baltic amber, collected from Yantarnyi quarry near Kaliningrad ( Russia: Kaliningrad Oblast) ( Zahradník & Háva 2015). Four species of the genera Dinoderus Stephens, 1830 , Amphicerus LeConte, 1861 , Protapate Wickham, 1912 and Xylobiops Casey, 1898 are known from the terminal Eocene of Florissant, USA ( Wickham 1912, 1913, 1914). An extinct genus of the Bostrichini is described from Miocene Dominican amber (Poinar 2013). Solórzano-Kraemer (2007) reported the discovery of a beetle probably belonging to the genus Prostephanus Lesne, 1898 from Miocene Mexican amber. Thus, auger beetles are known from various ambers and it is likely new species may be found in Danish amber as well.

Amber from Libau [now Liepāja] is not rare in the NHMD collection; only the commonest European amber species of ants (see below) are represented in the available inclusions (our data). Liepāja is the third biggest city of Latvia and a natural center for accumulation of Baltic amber collected from the western seashore of Kurzeme, mostly near Liepāja (Bukejs pers. com. 2024) .

The degree of similarity between the Baltic and Danish amber faunas, as well as Baltic and Rovno amber ( Telnov et al. 2023), strongly varies depending on the studied orders and superfamilies. For example, the degree of similarity between the Baltic and Danish aphidofaunas is very high ( Heie 1967, Wegierek pers. com. 2021). In contrast, half of the Danish hymenopteran genera are currently unknown from Baltic amber ( Simutnik & Perkovsky 2017, 2018, 2023; Simutnik et al. 2023; Belokobylskij et al. 2024, Belokobylskij & Perkovsky 2024). In fact, there is not a single species common to Danish and Baltic amber that occurs in the well-studied Danish Encyrtidae fauna, whilst a half of the genera and species are common in Danish and Rovno amber ( Simutnik et al. 2021, 2023, Simutnik pers. com. 2024).

It seems to us that the high degree of similarity between the Danish and Baltic amber faunas of a particular group may depend on a predominance of temperate elements in their compositions and/or a close connection with the amber tree and the amber forest community as a whole. Both are considered true for aphids ( Heie 1967; Perkovsky et al. 2012; Perkovsky & Wegierek 2018). The amber forest social insects, in particular ants, also have a higher degree of faunal similarity. For example, from more than 160 species of European amber ants ( Perkovsky 2016, Dubovikoff et al. 2020, Radchenko 2023 etc.) 18 species are known from all European ambers ( Dlussky & Rasnitsyn 2009; Perkovsky 2016) and temperate ant and biting midge taxa obviously predominate in all European ambers ( Perkovsky 2017; Radchenko & Pekovsky 2021; Radchenko et al. 2021). In contrast, a high degree of difference is characteristic to cryophobic elements (e.g. inopeplines ( Jenkins Shaw et al. 2023); paussines ( Kirichenko-Babko & Perkovsky 2023), some cryophobic braconids and ants ( Belokobylskij et al. 2023, 2024)), for a significant part of which the climate of the Baltic amber forest was not entirely favourable. Good new example is the euphorine genus Centistoides van Achterberg, 1992 with extant species from Suriname and Madagaskar that was recently reported from Danish amber (Belokobylskij et al. 2024).

The Danish amber fauna of Coleoptera is badly understudied. Even the very belonging of many beetles to Danish amber fauna until recently was mostly indicated just as s “country of origin: Denmark ” (e. g. Bogri et al. 2018), but new species of beetles from Danish amber are described every year (e.g. Shavrin et al. 2023; Lyubarsky et al. 2024). The genus Stephanopachys does not extends beyond the Holarctic and is definitely not a cryophobic element. On the contrary, at least some of the species of the genus are characteristic specifically for the boreal zone of the Palaearctic and alpine areas ( Borowski et al. 2018), and Pinaceae and Cupressaceae were dominant not only in the Baltic amber forest ( Sadowski et al. 2022), but also in other European amber forests, so we can expect new finds of Stephanopachys not only in Danish, but also in other European ambers.

Acknowledgements

The authors thank to Alexandr P. Rasnitsyn ( Paleontological Institute , Moscow, Russia) for discussion. We are obliged to Dmitry Telnov ( Natural History Museum , London , United Kingdom) for proofreading the manuscript, to Andris Bukejs (Daugavpils University , Daugavpils, Latvia) for information about amber from Liepāja and anonymous reviewers for improving the overall quality of the manuscript. EEP was supported by the Scholars at Risk Ukraine ( SARU) program, jointly funded by the Villum Foundation, Carlsberg Foundation, and Novo Nordisk Foundation, and by the grant “Support and development of the amber collection of the Statens Naturhistoriske Museum” from Dr. Bøje Benzons Støttefond .

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Figures

Figure 1. Stephanopachys ambericus, NHMD-116342, habitus, dorsal view, Baltic amber, Latvia.

Figure 2. Stephanopachys ambericus, NHMD-116342, habitus, lateral view, Baltic amber, Latvia.

Figure 3. Stephanopachys ambericus, NHMD-116342, habitus, ventral view, Baltic amber, Latvia.

Figure 4. Stephanopachys ambericus, NHMD-116341, habitus, dorsal view, Danish amber.