Platandria carolinae Casey, 1910

Brunke, Adam J., Klimaszewski, Jan, Dorval, Julie-Anne, Bourdon, Caroline, Paiero, Steven M. & Marshall, Stephen A., 2012, New species and distributional records of Aleocharinae (Coleoptera, Staphylinidae) from Ontario, Canada, with a checklist of recorded species, ZooKeys 186, pp. 119-206 : 124

Platandria carolinae Casey, 1910 New Canadian Record Fig. 9Map 9 genitalia in Génier and Klimaszewski (1986)

Material examined.

CANADA: ON:Lincoln Co., Short Hills, Wildlife Pres., 1 mi E of N. Pelham, flowers of 'Cornis florida’ L., 5.vi.1973, H. Frania, 2 (CNC).

Distribution.

Canada: ON; USA: DC, GA, IL, IN, IA, KA, LA, NE, NJ, NC, PA, TN, VA ( Génier and Klimaszewski 1986). Native.

Comments.

This is the only eastern species of Platandria ( Génier and Klimaszewski 1986) and the first record of this species for Canada. Hanley (2003) reported Platandria from Canada (Ontario) for the first time in a summary of its general distribution but without locality information. Little is known about the biology of Platandria except that they are associated with the flowers of various shrubs (Ashe in Newton et al. 2000), despite an older account of an association with fungi ( Blatchley 1910). The above specimens were collected in the flowers of Flowering Dogwood, a species confined in Canada to the Carolinian region of southern Ontario. As far as known, Platandria carolinae is similarly distributed in Canada, possibly indicating a staphylinid-plant association though this species was not among the assemblage of Coleoptera found on Flowering Dogwood by Rhoades et al. (2011) in Tennessee.