Two New Species of Anticyphon Ruta (Coleoptera: Scirtidae) from Argentina and Ecuador

It can be expected that more undescribed species of Anticyphon occur in high altitude Andean habitats. Key Words: taxonomy, marsh beetles, South America, Andes DOI.org/ 10.1649/0010-065X-72.4.707 Zoobank.org/ urn:lsid:zoobank.org:pub: 8549E53D-DA8B-4029-A34C-0F889704DB66 About 200 species and 10 genera of Scirtidae are known from the Neotropics. Those relatively low figures, however, do not reflect the true diversity of Neotropical marsh beetles, most of which remain undescribed.

For many countries, there are very few regional records (Chaboo and Shepard 2015), and species are often unidentifiable due to the lack of modern revisions and keys. However, the situation has been improved recently; see the recent papers on South American marsh beetles for details (Lawrence 2001; Ruta 2011; Klausnitzer 2012, 2013; Libonatti and Ruta 2013; Libonatti 2014, 2015). Anticyphon was recently described from high altitude Andean cloud forests and páramo in Ecuador, Peru, and Colombia (Ruta 2016).

The genus included six species of small to moderately sized beetles, usually uniformly brown and only occasionally black. Anticyphon can be identified on the basis of external characters, such as the small head, narrow pronotum with rounded, not produced anterolateral angles, and the narrow and deep mesoventral fossa. However, the most reliable diagnostic character is the morphology of the male genitalia: long and narrow penis with trifid trigonium and paired parameroids, and tegmen with paired parameres that can be modified and bear mesal processes.

Females have been described only for a single species, Anticyphon oyonensis Ruta. Specimens of two new species were found in the collections of the Australian National Insect Collection and the University of Kansas Snow Entomological Museum. These species are described in the present paper.