Symphora LeConte, 1866

Alekseev, Vitalii Igorevich & Bukejs, Andris, 2021, Fossil Melandryidae (Coleoptera: Tenebrionoidea) from Eocene Baltic amber of the Sambian peninsula: new genus, six new species, new records and key to described taxa, Zootaxa 4965 (1), pp. 142-166 : 154

Genus Symphora LeConte, 1866

Note. The amber specimens under study possess morphological characters of two externally similar genera placed as incertae sedis within the subfamily Melandryinae : Symphora LeConte, 1866 and Microtonus LeConte, 1862 , both absent in Europe and distributed in the New World and eastern Asia ( Nikitsky & Pollock 2008, 2010). The set of these characters is: procoxae contiguous, pretarsal claws simple, head visible from above, frontoclypeal suture deeply impressed, antennae 11-segmented and filiform, antennal insertions concealed from above, pronotum without triangular basal impressions, protrochantin invisible, lateral sides of pronotum not margined, elytra narrowly ovate, elytral punctuation irregular, and penultimate tarsomere of all legs bilobed. Several morphological features observed in fossil specimens (e.g. eyes slightly emarginated, pronotal posterior angles not acute, pronotal lateral sides very shorty margined posteriorly, and the widest at base pronotum) allow us to assign these beetles to Symphora . This genus includes ten extant Neotropical species ( LeConte 1866; Champion 1888, 1916; Nikitsky & Pollock 2008; Pollock 2015), known from Brazil [ Symphora infuscata Champion, 1916 ; S. longicornis Champion, 1916 ], Panama [ S. apicalis Champion, 1889 ], Guatemala [ S. maculata Champion, 1889 ; S. tropicalis Champion, 1889 ; S. ruficeps Champion, 1889 ; S. convexa Champion, 1889 ; S. elongata Champion, 1889 ], and Mexico [ S. impressicollis Champion, 1889 ; S. lanceolata Champion, 1916 ]; and four extant Holarctic species, two of them occurring in eastern North America [ S. flavicollis (Haldeman, 1848) and S. rugosa (Haldeman, 1848) ] and two distributed in eastern Asia (Russian Far East, Japan) [ S. atra Nomura, 1959 and S. brunnea (Marseul, 1876) = S. miyakei Nomura & Hayashi, 1960 ].