HOPLANDRIINI INCERTAE SEDIS

Hanley, Rodney S., 2003, Generic revision of the staphylinid beetle tribe Hoplandriini (Insecta: Coleoptera: Staphylinidae: Aleocharinae), Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society 138 (1), pp. 83-140 : 134

HOPLANDRIINI INCERTAE SEDIS

Six genera included within the Hoplandriini by previous authors were not treated with full generic descriptions in this study. In most instances, the type specimens from these taxa are housed in private collections and are unavailable for examination. Repeated efforts to borrow material from these collections ended in failure. In the cases of the Cameron and Bernhauer taxa, type series were generally composed of single specimens, which could not be dissected and consequently were not treated with full descriptions. In addition, taxa described by Pace are often listed under tribal names with no comments or explanatory statements. I have found numerous situations in Pace’s papers where the tribal name is misplaced, giving the appearance of taxa being included or excluded from particular tribes, creating considerable taxonomic confusion. Every effort was made in this study to accurately determine into which tribe those taxa listed as hoplandriines should be included. Many of Pace’s types, however, are unavailable for examination and the published descriptions are often inadequate to confidently determine tribal or subtribal placement .

As a result, for the following genera I have extracted as much morphological data as possible from the primary literature or single, undissected specimens in an attempt to provide an abbreviated description for each taxon. These sections are not intended to provide full descriptions and their accuracy is wholly dependent on the quality of the original descriptions or the condition of the single specimens. In some cases, I have used the ‘?’ symbol to denote those characters the original author used, but are questionable. I have attempted to concentrate on those characters useful in previous description of hoplandriine genera. It is my hope that these abbreviated descriptions will aid future workers in dealing with the systematics of these groups and of the Hoplandriini .