Beetles (Coleoptera) of Peru: A Survey of the Families. Cucujidae, Laemophloeidae, Silvanidae, Passandridae (Cucujoidea)

Abstract

Recognition: The “cucujid” group of lower cucujoid families was for a long time considered to be one large family, composed of the four following families, plus several tenebrionoid genera (e.g., Hemipeplus of the Mycteridae and Inopeplus of the Salpingidae) that share the dorsoventrally flattened body form. By the mid-20th Century the composite nature of the family was beginning to be widely recognized and by the end of the century the dismantling of it had been completed, although the position of the Old World family Propalticidae is still under discussion. Most members of these four families share a dorsoventrally compressed body form, feed on fungi, and are associated with a substrate of dead plant material (bark, wood, dead leaves, leaf litter). One family, Passandridae, has secondarily evolved to be larval ectoparasitoids of other wood-inhabiting insects, and several genera of that family and of the Laemophloeidae have evolved a subcylindrical body form and are found in the galleries of wood-boring Coleoptera (Thomas, 1993).