Himalusini

Maruyama, Munetoshi, Yamamoto, Shûhei & Eldredge, Taro K., 2014, Synopsis of the Japanese species of Aleocharinae (Coleoptera: Staphylinidae), with review of the type specimens I. Tribes Himalusini and Leucocraspedini, Zootaxa 3887 (3), pp. 393-400 : 394

Tribe Himalusini Klimaszewski, Pace & Center, 2010

Himalusini Klimaszewski, Pace & Center, 2010: 3 (original description; type genus: Himalusa Pace, 2006 ) Sinanarchusini Pace, 2013: 22 (original description; type genus Sinanarchusa Pace, 2013). Syn. nov.

Diagnosis. The tribe Himalusini is an extremely distinctive tribe that may be diagnosed by the following combination of characters: (1) Parameres distinctive, with a long apical lobe adorned with scabrous to serrate sculpture and paramerite vellum located at the apex of a production (in Sinanarchusa the paramere is further modified into a simple, broad-lamellate structure covered almost entirely in scabrous sculpturing similar to those found on the apical lobes of Himalusa and Protinodes ); (2) labium with ligula extremely broad, confluent with hypopharynx and occupying entire width of prementum; (3) prementum transverse with elongate, delicate and thin lateral apodemes that converge at their apices; (4) maxilla with a pseudosegment.

Comments. We recognize the genera Protinodes , Himalusa and Sinanarchusa in Himalusini . Pace (2013) established the tribe Sinanarchusini for the genus Sinanarchusa described in the same paper together with its type species Sinanarchusa daxuensis. According to the original description, in which the mouth part and genital characters are well illutrated, the diagnostic states of the type species agree well with that of Himalusa except for that of the apical lobe of the paramere (we did not examine the type specimen). There are no important states to distingish Sinanarchusini from Himalusini .

The elusive tribe Himalusini is turning out to be a phylogenetically difficult tribe to reconcile. Adult morphology, larval morphology, multi-gene molecular analyses, and independent gene trees all conflict in some way, making Himalusini an interesting challenge within the aleocharine tree of life.

Adult morphology, especially the overall similarity in the mouthparts and aedeagus suggests common ancestry with Placusini Mulsant and Rey, 1871, and possibly Hoplandriini Casey, 1910 (Eldredge in prep.). On the other hand, the larval morphology for Himalusa (the only genus of Himalusini for which the larvae are known) points to common ancestry with Autaliini Thomson, 1859 and Homalotini Heer, 1839 (Eldredge et al. in prep.). Lastly, depending on the dataset and how it is treated, molecular sequence data will variously recover shared common ancestry between Himalusini and Homalotini (in part) or Placusini (Eldredge unpub. data, Osswald et al. 2013).