Lepilius Champion, 1905

Anderson, Robert S., 2012, The Genus Lepilius Champion (Coleoptera: Curculionidae: Molytinae: Conotrachelini) in North America, with Description of a New Species, Lepilius chisosensis Anderson, from Big Bend National Park, Texas, U. S. A., The Coleopterists Bulletin 66 (1), pp. 67-69 : 67

Lepilius Champion, 1905

Lepilius Champion 1905: 454 . Type species: Lepilius pulchellus Champion (monotypy). Papp (1979: 95); O’ Brien and Wibmer (1982: 134); Alonso- Zarazaga and Lyal (1999: 200); Anderson (2002: 787, 791).

Diagnosis. Size small, length 1.5–3.0 mm, width 0.9–1.5 mm. Vestiture of dense recumbent to appressed scales and scattered suberect to erect variously clavate scales. Eyes variable in size, widely separated by about width base of rostrum, lateral in placement, covered by small prothoracic postocular lobes when rostrum in repose. Antenna with slender funiculus of 7 articles, club oval, small, compact. Scutellum minute. Elytra rounded-oval, lacking surface modifications, slightly longer than wide, 10-striate. Prosternum with deep median channel, lateral margins carinate, meso- and metasterna sloping anteriorly but flat, not modified for reception of rostrum. Pro-, and especially meso- and metacoxae widely separated by about width of coxa. Femora simple, tibia truncate apically with large, recurved, hook-like tooth on outer apical angle. Abdomen with ventrites 1 and 2 subequal in length, longer than short 3rd and 4th, latter two subequal in length to 5th.

Comments. The species described below is the second in the genus Lepilius and the first (and only) known from the United States. Recent collections of leaf litter arthropods throughout Mexico and Central America have discovered numerous additional species of Lepilius and a number of related taxa that will warrant recognition as new genera. A related undescribed genus known from numerous species from Mexico south into Panama has sexually dimorphic, variously tuberculate elytra, vestiture of very sparse scales, and a characteristic medial, mesosternal, plumose seta-encircled pit immediately behind the procoxae. Specimens of this latter genus are similar in habitus to the unrelated New Zealand genus Geochus Broun , larvae of which are miners of dead leaves in leaf litter.