Saturday 10 October 2015

Awas gigas: A new species of Rove Beetle from Guangxi Province, China.

Rove Beetles, Staphylinidae, of the genus Awas are tiny Beetles with elongate heads and constricted waists found living in Ant's nests on the Malay Peninsula, in Taiwan and in continental China. The group is poorly understood, with three of the five described species being known only from a sngle specimen, and the remaining two from four and five individuals respectively.



In a paper published in the journal ZooKeys on 23 September 2015, Zi-Wei Yin, Jia-Wei Shen and Li-Zhen Li of the Department of Biology at Shanghai Normal University describe a new species of Awas Beetle from the Daoyao Shan Natural Reserve in Guanxi Province in southern China.



The new species is named Awas gigas, meaning 'large' on account of the body size of the genus, reaching slightly over 5 mm, which is far larger than any previously described species. The Beetle was first recorded in July 2014, when four specimens (two males and two females) where found in a nest made by Ants of the genus Pachycondyla nesting under decomposing wood in broad-leaved forest.The area was revisited in May 2015, and thirteen further specimens (one male, twelve female) were collected from several Ant's nests, all of members of the genus Pachycondyla.




Dorsal habitus of Awas gigas. (A) Male (B) Female. Scale bars are 1.0 mm. Yin et al. (2015).



See also...



http://sciencythoughts.blogspot.co.uk/2015/03/a-new-species-of-rove-beetle-from.htmlA new species of Rove Beetle from Jalisco State, Mexico.                                                 Rove Beetles of the genus Megarthrus are Fungus-feeding Beetles distributed globally, but are most numerous and diverse in north-temperate regions. In...
Rove Beetles (Staphylinidae) are an unusual-looking group of Beetles, distinguished by their short wing cases, which makes them look rather unbeetle-like. They are a successful group, with over 46 000...
Rove Beetles (Staphylinidae) are an unusual-looking group of Beetles, distinguished by their short wing cases, which makes them look rather...


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