Morphology and geometric morphometrics unveil a new genus of Cantharidae (Coleoptera, Elateroidea) from mid-Cretaceous Burmese amber, with a preliminary investigation on the phylogenetic position
Wei Zhao, Haoyu Liu, Michael Geiser, Yuxia Yang
Abstract
Some fossil Cantharidae from the Burmese amber have been reported, but it is still a poorly investigated group and some unknown taxa remain to be discovered. In this study, we employed comparative morphology and geometric morphometrics to uncover a new catharid genus from the mid-Cretaceous Burmese amber, and further investigate its phylogenetic position within Cantharidae by different cladistic methods. As a result, Brevipterus gen. nov., was defined to accommodate B. strungei (Fanti & Damggard, 2019) comb. nov. transferred from Sanaungulus and another three new species, B. acutiapicis sp. nov., B. abtusiapicis sp. nov. and B. megacephalus sp. nov., and the produced topologies indicate that the new genus is always grouped together with other members of the subfamily Cantharinae. These results will improve our knowledge about Burmite cantharids and provide some more early evidence in reconstructing the phylogeny of Cantharidae. ZooBank LSID: urn:lsid:zoobank.org:pub:8CCFE45E-64C9-443F-A4B9-801655DEF1A8