A new flightless genus of rove beetle (Coleoptera: Staphylinidae: Omaliinae) from Tasmania

The family Staphylinidae – the rove beetles – is the largest family of beetles in the world and also one of the least understood.  There are currently over 57,000 described species in over 3,600 genera and more are still being discovered at a rapid rate.  In this project we describe a new flightless Staphylinid genus from Tasmania belonging to the tribe Omaliini of the subfamily Omaliinae, extending knowledge of the highly endemic Australian fauna.  We studied the beetles whole as dry specimens and in alcohol as well as cleared and dissected in permanent or temporary microscope slides.  Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) allowed us to examine and image selected characters not clearly visible with optical microscopy.  Using these sources of data we prepared descriptions and images of the beetles including species-specific genitalic structures and compiled all known distributional and ecological data.  We added the genus into an ongoing phylogenetic analysis of World Omaliini by the second author to infer its phylogenetic placement.  While we initially believed that this genus consisted of a single undescribed species from Tasmania we discovered that there are actually two species inhabiting different areas of that island.  Several other genera of Omaliini have austral disjunct distributions that probably reflect an ancient origin on Gondwana.  Our new genus needs to be compared carefully with several undescribed species of wingless Omaliinae known from southern New Zealand to assess whether they are all phylogenetically close – representing another disjunct genus – or convergently wingless.