The family Phloeostichidae was proposed by Sen Gupta and Crowson (1969) for the European Phloeostichus (Cucujidae), the New Zealand Agapytho (Salpingidae), the Chilean Rhopalobrachium (Oedemeridae or Pythidae), and the Australian Hymaea (originally in Tenebrionidae but later included in Boganiidae by Sen Gupta and Crowson 1966). Subsequently Crowson (1973) stated that the 4 phloeostichid subfamilies (Phloeostichinae, Hymaeinae, Agapythinae and Priasilphinae) “would be better treated as independent families, with individual affinities to other clavicorn families,” and later 2 other genera were added to this family by Lawrence (1988): Tasmosalpingus (Salpingidae) and Myrabolia (Silvanidae). Lawrence and Britton (1991) proposed 2 additional phloeostichid subfamilies, Myraboliinae and Tasmosalpinginae, and Lawrence (1995) later added Australian and Chilean species to the formerly monotypic Rhopalobrachium. Although the family Phloeostichidae appears to be a taxon of convenience, consisting mainly of monogeneric subfamilies with basal cucujoid features, it is not clear which of these taxa should be elevated to family rank and which should be transferred to other exisiting families. We have examined 20 exemplar genera from basal Cucujoidea in the context of a cladistic analysis using 98 characters (38 larval and 60 adult)and rooted with Trogossitidae. Several trees were produced from the analysis and a new classification will be based upon all parsimonious trees and those derived from a posteriori character weighting. Branch support for relationships was determined by parsimony jackknifing and bootstrapping. Essentially, there is evidence to raise all of the subfamilies to family level ranks.
Species 1: Coleoptera Phloeostichidae
Species 2: Coleoptera Priasilphidae
Keywords: Cucujoidea
Back to Section A Symposium: Phylogeny of the Cucujoidea I
Back to Section Symposia
Back to The 2003 ESA Annual Meeting and Exhibition