Albert Allen false firefly beetle (Namibdrilus albertalleni) from Namibia with unique morphology of Drilini

NEWS - Albert Allen false firefly beetle (Namibdrilus albertalleni) from Namibia brings the Drilini to 16 genera as this unique taxon provides new insights into the diversity and evolution of this enigmatic and intriguing lineage of paedomorphic beetles.

Drilini are soft-bodied predatory beetles with females undergoing incomplete metamorphosis. About 150 described species are distributed across the Afrotropical, Palearctic and Oriental regions with the highest diversity known from sub-Saharan Africa.

The type species in this study is the only representative of Drilini with unidentified mandibles and no hooks on the dorsal part of the median aedeagal lobe, two of the few characters used for identification. Morphology belongs to the Drilus clade which previously contained only taxa from the Palearctic Region.

The Namibian specimen and the generic name Namibdrilus are derived from the Republic of Namibia, plus Drilus, the genus name within the Elateridae. The name albertalleni is from Albert Allen who allowed Robin Kundrata and Gabriela Packova from Palacky University in Olomouc to study the unique specimen.

Based on the results of molecular phylogeny and morphological characters, Drilini is divided into clades A, W, S, M and D. Clades A, W, S and M contain Afrotropical taxa singly or predominantly with some species of clade S extending into the Oriental Region, while clade D contains exclusively Palearctic species.

The researchers suspect that Namibdrilus from southern Africa belongs to one of the African clades, but morphologically it belongs to the clade containing the Palearctic species. All known African Drilini differ from Namibdrilus by having a short frontoclipal region and a median aedeagal lobe with a dorsal hook.

One of the most striking characters of Namibdrilus is that the frontoclipal is very forward and is even visible from the ventral view of the head. Drilini have frontoclipal regions of variable shape, but none of them resemble the frontoclipal region of Namibdrilus which is oriented straight forward and somewhat truncated apically and broadly rounded.

Original research

Kundrata R, Packova G (2024). Discovery of a new soft-bodied click-beetle genus from Namibia with a unique morphology leads to a modified diagnosis of Drilini (Coleoptera, Elateridae). ZooKeys 1213: 183-197, DOI:10.3897/zookeys.1213.131283

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