Lycocerus rhagonychiformis (Wittmer, 1983)

Hsiao, Yun & Okushima, Yûichi, 2016, A new species of the genus Lycocerus from Taiwan (Coleoptera: Cantharidae), Acta Entomologica Musei Nationalis Pragae 56 (1), pp. 255-264 : 256

Lycocerus rhagonychiformis group

Diagnosis. Small size (about 4–6 mm); small and not very prominent eyes; knife-shaped, subtriangular apical maxillary palpomere; filiform antennae, exceeding half of elytral length in male, extending to elytral midlength in female, without groove; subquadrate pronotum, narrower than head in male, nearly as wide as or slightly narrower than head in female; all claws simple in both sexes; abdominal ventrite VII of female with not well developed or indistinct median lobe; laterophyses of aedeagus long, visible in lateral view; long spermathecal duct; spermatheca provided with a spiral tube.

Differential diagnosis. This species-group resembles L. hanatanii species-group, which was defined and proposed by OKUSHIMA (2005). It can be distinguished from L. hanatanii species-group by subtriangular apical maxillary palpomere; longer antennae in male; narrower pronotum, especially in male; laterophyses of aedeagus long, visible in lateral view.

Remarks. HSIAO et al. (2016) revised L. hanatanii species-group by adding several members from Taiwan and mainland China. They used the morphological-based phylogenetic analysis including all the defined species-groups to support their classification. The clade L. rhagonychiformis + L. hanatanii species-group is supported in the resultant strict consensus tree. We herein propose a new species-group, Lycocerus rhagonychiformis group including L. rhagonychiformis ( Wittmer, 1983) and L. wenchuani sp. nov. based on its diagnostic characters separated from L. hanatanii group and the phylogenetic relationship suggested in HSIAO et al. (2016).