Abstract
The scydmaenine tribe Eutheiini is recorded from Australia for the first time. Paraneseuthia carltoni sp. n. and P. booloumba sp. n. are described and illustrated, both from Queensland. In a parsimony-based phylogenetic analysis using adult morphological characters including genital features, the Australian species together with the Melanesian type species of Paraneseuthia Franz, P. peckorum Franz, were found to be more closely related to East Palearctic congeners than to most of the Paraneseuthia in the Sunda-Papuan area. The topology of the tree and biogeographic data suggest a Sundaland origin of this genus, with three major dispersal routes from a center located in present-day Sumatra: (i) north-eastern colonization of the Palearctic Far East, via a continental or island-arc route; (ii) south-eastern dispersal to East Australia; and (iii) eastern dispersal to Melanesia, possibly via the Quaternary Outer-Melanesian Arc. The important role of dispersal in the evolution of Paraneseuthia is supported by the presence of this genus on isolated volcanic islands, such as the southern Moluccas and Fiji, which were never connected to larger land masses.
Highlights
Paraneseuthia Franz, 1986 is one of the most enigmatic genera within the tribe Eutheiini
One of them is the limited set of morphological characters available for analysis
Some characters used in the present study may reflect poorly understood evolutionary events and their unambiguous interpretation is not possible with the current state of knowledge
Summary
Paraneseuthia Franz, 1986 is one of the most enigmatic genera within the tribe Eutheiini. Not explicitly placed in any tribe (Franz, 1986), later treated as a member of the Cephenniini (Newton & Franz, 1998) and transferred to the Eutheiini (JaáoszyĔski & Hoshina, 2004), this genus initially was known only from Melanesia and the Russian Far East (Franz, 1986; Kurbatov, 1990, 1991) This disjunct distribution turned out to be a result of an inadequate study of Scydmaeninae and a general rareness of Paraneseuthia. Characteristic of Paraneseuthia are the relatively stout and strongly convex body, elytra more rounded than truncated and exposing only a part of the pygidium, rudimentary basal elytral foveae, very high (i.e., strongly projecting ventrad) keel on the mesoventrite and lack of an occipital constriction Some of these characters, very unusual for the Eutheiini, are shared only with a single genus of this tribe, Euthiconus Reitter, 1881
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