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...
A 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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