Neosaprinus Bickhardt, 1909

Lackner, Tomas & Leschen, Richard A. B., 2017, A monograph of the Australopacific Saprininae (Coleoptera, Histeridae), ZooKeys 689, pp. 1-263 : 13

Subgenus Neosaprinus Bickhardt, 1909

Neosaprinus Bickhardt, 1909: 243. Type species Saprinus gnathoncoides Bickhardt, 1909 (= Euspilotus rubriculus (Marseul, 1855)), by monotypy.

Diagnosis.

Diagnosis of this subgenus is based solely on the species E. (N.) rubriculus that has been recorded from the Australopacific Region. Frontal and supraorbital striae absent; eyes visible from above; cuticle dark brown to black; elytral striae 1-4 well developed; carinal prosternal striae divergent on apical half, thence running parallel, united anteriorly by deep sulcus; lateral prosternal striae shortened, attaining carinal prosternal striae at the point where these turn parallel; meso-metaventral stria absent; metepisternal stria complete.

Biology.

The biology of the members of the subgenus Neosaprinus is poorly documented, but species of this subgenus are usually found on the carcasses of vertebrates (Arriagada, pers. comm., 2014) or in caves (A.K. Tishechkin, unpublished). Gomy (2005) reports this species from the Island of La Réunion, collected inside a lava tube in the faeces of the Mascarene Swiftlet ( Collocalia francica Gmelin, 1789) and concluded that its cavernicolous habitat is nothing exceptional. He ( Gomy 2005) hypothesized that this species could have come from Brazil with a shipment of some kind of legumes, probably soybeans or corn. The labels of specimens of E. (N.) rubriculus recorded from Australia and/or New Zealand did not bear any information regarding their biology.

Distribution.

The subgenus Neosaprinus of the genus Euspilotus currently comprises nine described species, most of them occurring in the Neotropical Region ( Mazur 2011). One species, E. (N.) scrupularis (J.L. LeConte, 1860) is distributed across North America, from British Columbia (Canada, with doubt), through Texas, Arizona, Utah, California, Washington, Oregon (with doubt) to Florida (USA), as well as in Mexico ( Bousquet and Laplante 2006; Mazur 1997; Hatch 1962). One species, E. (N.) loebli Mazur, 1974 has been described from Malaysia and another one, E. (N.) perrisi (Marseul, 1872) occurs in the Palaearctic Region. In the Australopacific Region, we have examined three old specimens of E. (N.) rubriculus : two from Australia and one from New Zealand (Fig. 754).

Remarks.

This taxon is most likely to be confused with the genus Gnathoncus , with which it shares the absence of both frontal and supraorbital striae, but can easily be separated from it by single marginal epipleural stria (double in Gnathoncus ) and absence of the hooked appendix between the fourth dorsal elytral and sutural elytral striae, characteristic for Gnathoncus . Furthermore, E. (N.) rubriculus has small prosternal foveae connected by a transverse sulcus whereas species of the genus Gnathoncus lack these structures. The examined specimens from Australopacific Region of this species are: a single female from Sydney (OUMNH), a single male from Brisbane (QM), both Australia and a single female from Tairua, New Zealand (NZAC). This New Zealand specimen was possibly traded or given originally to Thomas Broun who lived in Tairua. We treat this species in our study as a potential introduction because it has also been reported elsewhere outside of its native range (e.g. La Réunion; see Lackner 2013c).