Cyclotrachelus Chaudoir, 1838

Bousquet, Yves, 2012, Catalogue of Geadephaga (Coleoptera, Adephaga) of America, north of Mexico, ZooKeys 245, pp. 1-1722 : 550-551

Genus Cyclotrachelus Chaudoir, 1838

Cyclotrachelus Chaudoir, 1838: 27. Type species: Feronia tenebricosa Dejean, 1828 (= Molops faber Germar, 1824) by monotypy. Etymology (original). From the Greek cyclos (circle) and trachelos (neck, by extension pronotum), alluding to the rounded shape of the pronotum (" corselet arrondi ") of the adults in the hands of Chaudoir [masculine].

Diversity.

Forty-five species in the temperate and subtropical regions of North America with one species ( Pterostichus substriatus ) extending into northern Mexico.

Identification.

Freitag (1969) revised the species. Since the publication of his revision, a replacement name has been proposed for Cyclotrachelus obsoleta and two subspecies are raised to species level in this publication.

Taxonomic Note.

This genus, certainly one of the most characteristic pterostichine elements in North America, could be closely related to Molops Bonelli (Freitag 1969), whose species inhabit the mountains of Europe and Turkey, or to the Sterocorax complex ( Sterocorax Ortuño, Paleocorax Ortuño, Iberopus Ortuño), a clade endemic to the Iberian Peninsula and currently included within the genus Pterostichus Bonelli (see Bousquet 1999: 198). Based on molecular sequence data, Will and Gill (2008: 113) found that the genus Pterostichus was monophyletic if Cyclotrachelus were included in the genus and recommended to treat Cyclotrachelus as a subgenus of Pterostichus .