Iphthiminus

Gardiner, Rebekka M. & Pollock, Darren A., 2015, Revision of the Nearctic species of the genus Iphthiminus Spilman (Coleoptera: Tenebrionidae), Zootaxa 4048 (3), pp. 352-391 : 352

Taxonomy of Iphthiminus

Before this revison, there were six recognized Nearctic species of Iphthiminus : I. sublaevis (Bland) , I. laevissimus (Casey) , I. opacus (Leconte) , I. serratus (Mannerheim) , I. lewisii (Horn) , and I. salebrosus (Casey) ( Poole & Gentili 1996). According to Horn (1870), I. sublaevis , serratus , and lewisii were subspecies of Ipthiminus serratus ( I. s. serratus , I. s. lewisii , and I. s. sublaevis ). No literature was found that gives explicit reason(s) why these subspecies were elevated to species status in recent catalogs. There are also three synonymies listed with I. serratus : I. subligatus , I. servilis , I. servator (Walker in Lord 1866, Poole & Gentili 1996). Types of these three Walker species were not examined for the present study (see the “taxonomic notes” section under I. serratus for details). Iphthiminus sublaevis was originally named Nyctobates sublaevis , described by Bland (1865). Iphthiminus laevissimus and I. salebrosus were described by Thomas L. Casey (1890, 1924), which made these names suspect due to his propensity to describe species without accounting for variation ( Capinera 2004).