An Improved and Expanded Key to the Eleodes (and other Amphidorini) of the United States and Canada (and Baja California)
The new and improved key: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1luLtNDHSD0Vcggy8SGRx0BeQ7PH0-HFd/view?usp=drivesdk
A little less than five months ago I made the final update to my key to the Eleodes species of the U.S. and Canada. Soon after I decided that it had glaring issues, like with subgenus Blapylis, subgen. Metablapylis, and separating subgen. Eleodes + subgen. Steneleodes from subgen. Melaneleodes + subgen. Litheleodes (more or less).
When I made that key I made it using the “simplest” characteristics I could, that only really made things more difficult and uncertain though.
I have now created a much more certain key, with the addition of the other Amphidorini genera, and the Baja Californian species. Thankfully the only cases where dissection is need is with extracting the male genitalia (parameres) of Eleodes wheeleri and Eleodes delicata, Trogloderus verpus and Trogloderus skillmani, and subgenus Blapylis of Eleodes, though with the first two location can almost always separate them as well.
Blapylis is the most difficult group to deal with, and it is essentially required that a male is collected, though having a female also helps in some cases. Identifying females can only really done using a logical guess with a similar male from the same location. Thankfully the only characteristics that are sex specific in Blapylis are the genitalia, tarsal setae, and the protibias in some cases. Couplet 118 and onwards are all Blapylis.
I did not include subspecies in my key, that is except for Eleodes eschscholtzii. This is because recent genetic tests have shown that the two subspecies are actually two different species, so when eschscholtzii eventually gets split this key can still have some accuracy in it. Eleodes ornatipennis and E. nevadensis are excluded from this key due to, according to M. Andrew Johnston, those species being probably synonymous (though the synonymy has not yet happened) with E. ornatipennis and E. delicata. For the former I was told this in correspondence with him, though for the latter things are more complicated. I am not sure if Johnston actually considers nevadensis to be a synonym of delicata (or technically the other way around since nevadensis is older), though I assume that the holotypes of the two may represent two distinct species, that have been very confused, and seem impossible to separate for now. This supposed synonymy is talked about by Johnston in these two papers: (https://www.researchgate.net/publication/288699312_Amphidorini_Leconte_Coleoptera_Tenebrionidae_of_Arizona_Keys_and_Species_Accounts and https://keep.lib.asu.edu/items/156871)
Somerby 1972 (https://www.proquest.com/openview/6555d1cccceb9847cd6838fee362ab87/1?pq-origsite=gscholar&cbl=18750&diss=y) and Johnston 2019 (https://www.researchgate.net/publication/337226406_Phylogenetic_revision_of_the_psammophilic_Trogloderus_LeConte_Coleoptera_Tenebrionidae_with_biogeographic_implications_for_the_Intermountain_Region) were very helpful to for this key in the Blapylis “section” and Trogloderus “section” respectively, and I give almost all of the credit for how I made those parts to those two people.
The quotes in couplet 10 are from the aforementioned paper Johnston 2019
The quotes in couplets 48 and 57 are from this 2018 dissertation by Johnston: (https://keep.lib.asu.edu/items/156871)
The quotes in couplet 104 are from this 1996 paper by Triplehorn: (https://www.ohiobiologicalsurvey.org/product/the-eleodes-of-baja-california-coleoptera-tenebrionidae-by-charles-triplehorn-1996/)
The quotes in couplets 123 and 125 are from the aforementioned paper Somerby 1972
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amazing work, thank you
Thank you!
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