Dasytidae (Laporte, 1840)

Liberti, Gianfranco, 2009, Improved Strategies for Branching on General Disjunctions, Zootaxa 2318, pp. 339-385 : 346

Dasytidae : family description and identification keys

The following description is based on the Italian Dasytidae only, with special reference to the Sardinian ones. Body shape elongated, rather depressed or normally convex, more or less covered with hairs (setae, thin pubescence, scale-like hairs or combinations of the three); integuments often rather soft, frequently black (sometimes with red spots), brown or green (shiny or matt) or covered with green-yellow, short and thick hairs that resemble scales and give their colour to the body surface. Dorsal body surface (head, pronotum and elytra) variously punctured, weakly striated or otherwise impressed (in the Malachiidae and Prionoceridae they are smooth and in the Melyridae heavily sculptured).

Antenna filiform ( Dasytes , Psilothrix , Dolichosoma ), gradually widened to weakly clubbed ( Danacea ), short and serrate ( Divales and some Dasytes , for instance D. flavescens ) or serrate to pectinate ( Aplocnemus ). In Acanthocnemus nigricans the antenna is distinctly clubbed (in the Melyridae it is short and serrated as in Divales ; in Sardinian Malachiidae and in Lobonyx (Prionoceridae) it is filiform).

Lateral sides of thorax free from defensive extrudable vesicles typical of the Malachiidae , hind coxa more or less perpendicular to sagittal plane of body (oblique in the Malachiidae ). Legs usually rather long and thin with simple tibiae and femora; pro-, meso- and metatarsi each consisting of 5 segments: claws showing important characters at the genus level as reported in the identification keys.

Size generally rather small: body length ranging between 2.5 (in some Allodanacaea ) and 7 mm (in some large specimens of Aplocnemus pectinatus and Psilothrix viridicoerulea ).