Catalogue of Tenebrionidae (Coleoptera) of North America

Description:

Tenebrionidae form a species-rich and morphologically diverse family with approximately 2300 genera and 20000 species worldwide. As a result of recent comparative and phylogenetic studies, several taxa previously treated as separate families are now included within Tenebrionidae, and alternatively others previously included in Tenebrionidae are now classified in other families. The aim of this work is to synthesize available taxonomic, nomenclatural, and distributional information for all darkling beetles known from North America, a region defined as the continent in the Western Hemisphere consisting of Greenland, Canada, United States of America, Mexico, Central America, and the West Indies.

All valid family-group (8 subfamilies, 52 tribes, 14 subtribes), genus-group (349 genera, 86 subgenera), and species-group names (2825 species, 215 subspecies) of darkling beetles recorded from North America and their available synonyms are listed. Data on extant, subfossil and fossil taxa are given. For each name the author, year and page number of the description are provided, with additional information (e.g., type species for genus-group names, author of synonymies for invalid taxa) depending on the taxon rank.

Several new nomenclatural acts are included. One new genus is described, new replacement names are proposed and usage of one species-group name is conserved using reversal of precedence. Several new synonyms are proposed for genus- and species-group taxa while some taxa previously thought to be junior synonyms are hereby considered valid. The type species of twelve genus-group taxa are designated for the first time.