Photuris Dejean, 1833

Silveira, Luiz F L, Khattar, Gabriel, Vaz, Stephanie, Wilson, Vinicius A., Souto, Paula M., Mermudes, José R. M., Stanger-Hall, Kathrin F., Macedo, Margarete V. & Monteiro, Ricardo F., 2020, Natural history of the fireflies of the Serra dos Órgãos mountain range (Brazil: Rio de Janeiro) - one of the ‘ hottest’ firefly spots on Earth, with a key to genera (Coleoptera: Lampyridae), Journal of Natural History 54 (5 - 6), pp. 275-308 : 300

Photuris Dejean, 1833 ( Figure 5 C – F )

This genus can be diagnosed by clypeus connate or fused to frons, head wider than distance between hypomeres, tarsal claw with anterior half bifid; and lanterns present on abdominal sterna VI and VII. Male flash patterns are very important in species discrimination (reviewed in Lloyd 2018), as they seem to evolve more quickly than morphology, and rather predictably among geographic regions (discussed in Faust 2017). However, as far as we are aware, comparative studies integrating DNA, morphology and flash pattern variation are lacking, and species identification based on morphology seems reasonable at the local scale. Males usually have greater eyes and lanterns, but smaller mandibles, than females, but sexes are otherwise very similar ( Souto et al. 2019). Lloyd (2018) published a monumental work detailing morphology and flash patterns of North American Photuris species. Rosa (2007) described the immature stages of Photuris fulvipes (Blanchard 1837) .

Figures

Figure 5. Diversity of Photurinae fireflies of the Serrados Órgãos.A –Bicellonycha albilatera, B – Bicellonycha tenuicornis, C – Photuris velox, D – Photuris elliptica, E – Photuris femoralis (modified from Souto et al. 2019), F – Photuris lugubris, G – Pyrogaster moestus, H – Pyrogaster lunifer, I – Pyrogaster vestitus, J – Pyrogaster elongatior, K – Pyrogaster aureus, L – Pyrogaster angustatus, M – Pyrogaster nigrolineatus, N – Pyrogaster telephorinus, O – Pyrogaster margipallens, P – Pyrogaster atrocinctus, Q – Pyrogaster coxalis. Scale bar:2 mm.