Bad news for bees: new species of bee killers (Hemiptera: Reduviidae: Apiomerus spp.)

True bugs of the new world genus Apiomerus Hahn 1831 (Hemiptera: Reduviidae: Harpactorinae), commonly known as bee killers or bee assassins, are extremely abundant and morphologically diverse. Despite this, to date only 105 species have been described of the more than 200 that are estimated to exist. Eight species groups have been proposed for the North and Central American fauna (Szerlip 1980), based primarily on characters of the genitalia. The monophyly of two of these groups, the pictipes and crassipes, are tested and a preliminary species level phylogeny within the groups is presented.