Photurinae, Lacordaire, 1857

Martin, Gavin J., Stanger-Hall, Kathrin F., Branham, Marc A., Da Silveira, Luiz F. L., Lower, Sarah E., Hall, David W., Li, Xue-Yan, Lemmon, Alan R., Lemmon, Emily Moriarty & Bybee, Seth M., 2019, Higher-Level Phylogeny and Reclassification of Lampyridae (Coleoptera: Elateroidea), Insect Systematics and Diversity (AIFB) 3 (6), No. 11, pp. 1-15 : 9

Photurinae and Lampyrinae

All photurine genera in our analyses (we were unable to sample Presbyolampis Buck, 1947 ) were recovered in a monophyletic lineage with the old-world Vesta . Known only from the New World, the Photurinae are typically characterized by bifurcate claws in males, and eyes expanding beyond the hypomeron. Nakane (1991) transferred the members of the Vestina ( Vesta , Cladodes , Ledocas Olivier , Dodacles Olivier , and Dryptelytra Laporte ) to the Lampyrinae , and moved Psilocladus to the Cyphonocerinae (see above) and Ethra to the Lampyrinae ; he did not mention Scissicauda or Photoctus . Our analyses agree with Nakane (1991) in the placement of Cladodes and Ethra ; however, the old-world Vesta sampled for our analyses formed a monophyletic lineage within the Photurinae , a new-world clade. Vesta is a speciose genus with representatives in both the Old and New World. McDermott (1964) recognized that Vesta might not be a natural group. In his 1966 catalogue he continued to treat the new-world taxa as potentially independent from the old-world taxa. As we were unable to sample the new-world Vesta , or the other members of the Vestini , our analyses are inconclusive with regard to the subfamilial placement of the Vesta . Therefore, we transfer Vesta and the other members of the Vestini ( Dodacles , Dryptelytra , and Ledocas ) to Lampyridae incertae sedis pending further morphological and phylogenetic analyses.

The Lampyrinae are a diverse assemblage of genera lacking any stable morphological characters ( McDermott 1964; Jeng 2008). It is in part due to this that we believe so many ‘lampyrine’ genera are/have been mis-classified. Based on our present phylogenetic analyses, we transfer the genus Scissicauda from Amydetinae into Lampyrinae . Since neither Photoctus nor Araucariocladus were included in the present analyses we transfer these to Lampyridae incertae sedis, pending further phylogenetic analyses.