Catapionus Schoenherr, 1842

Grebennikov, Vasily V., 2016, Flightless Catapionus (Coleoptera: Curculionidae: Entiminae) in Southwest China survive the Holocene trapped on mountaintops: new species, unknown phylogeny and clogging taxonomy, Zootaxa 4205 (3), pp. 243-254 : 246

Catapionus Schoenherr, 1842

Schoenherr 1842: 245 (species included: basilicus ). Type species: Catapionus basilicus Boheman, 1842 , by original designation.

Diagnosis. Morimoto et al. (2015) provided the most recent and detailed diagnosis for the genus, although this was restricted to the Catapionus fauna of Japan containing less than 10% of the known species diversity. Adults of Catapionus are operationally recognized by their scaly dorsum and characteristic pear-shaped habitus in combination with the fact that, besides Callirhopalus Hochhuth and Leptolepurus Desbrochers des Loges, both monotypic and mainly allopatric to Catapionus , Catapionus is the only genus of Cneorhinini in Asia. Additional characters used in regional treatments to key out the genus (i.e. in Bajtenov 1974b for the former Soviet Central Asia or in Egorov et al. 1996 for the Russian Far East ) might be relevant to the local faunas but may be inapplicable for all species of the genus. Externally , adults of Catapionus resemble those of the sympatric Dermatodes Schoenherr , Dermatoxenus Marshall and perhaps other Dermatodini , while no morphological characters have been adequately tested to separate these groups. The generic diagnosis of Catapionus by Marshall (1916) has the advantage of being prepared using the type species and in comparison with other potentially related genera of Cneorhinini and Dermatodini but is limited, however, to the former British India. Van Emden’s (1936) key to Entiminae tribes and genera might also be of use to identify a member of the genus.