Zaiwa: A new genus of the family Lophocateridae from mid-Cretaceous Burmese amber (Coleoptera: Cleroidea)

Abstract

Lophocateridae is a small family of cleroid beetles with more than one hundred species in 14 genera (Crowson, 1970; Kolibáč, 2013; Kolibáč & Peris, 2021). While the group was previously treated as a subfamily or tribe of Trogossitidae (e.g., Crowson, 1964; Barron, 1971; Ślipiński, 1992; Kolibáč, 2006), molecular phylogenetic analyses have not support the monophyly of Trogossitidae sensu lato (Bocak et al., 2014; Hunt et al., 2007; McKenna et al., 2015; Zhang et al., 2018; Kolibáč et al., 2021). In the most comprehensive analysis of Cleroidea performed to date by Gimmel et al. (2019), Lophocateridae was recovered as sister to Chaetosomatidae and Trogossitidae sensu stricto and elevated to family level. Extant Lophocateridae are cosmopolitan and display diverse modes of life, including fungivorous, herbivorous and predatory species, all of which are mostly associated with saproxylic habitats (Kolibáč, 2013).