''Xerolinus'' is a genus of
darkling beetle. It consists of approximately thirty species found in the
West Indies. Michael A. Ivie and Charles J. Hart named and circumscribed the genus in 2016.
Taxonomic history
The genus ''Xerolinus'' was
circumscribed
In geometry, the circumscribed circle or circumcircle of a polygon is a circle that passes through all the vertices of the polygon. The center of this circle is called the circumcenter and its radius is called the circumradius.
Not every po ...
in 2016 by
Montana State University
Montana State University (MSU) is a Public university, public land-grant university, land-grant research university in Bozeman, Montana. It is the state's largest university. MSU offers baccalaureate degrees in 60 fields, master's degrees in 6 ...
coleopterists Michael A. Ivie and Charles J. Hart. They initially included twenty-nine species, which were mostly transferred from the genus ''
Diastolinus''. In a separate 2016 paper, Hart and Ivie
described two new ''Xerolinus'' species.
Ivie and Hart designated ''X. sallei'', which French etymologists
Étienne Mulsant and
Claudius Rey
Claudius Rey (2 September 1817, in Lille – 31 January 1895, in Lille) was a French entomologist .
Rey’s family owned a prosperous printing works which went bankrupt in 1847. One of his uncles, the owner of a vineyard producing Morgon, offere ...
initially
described as ''Diastolinus sallei'' in 1859, to be the
type species of ''Xerolinus''. The
generic name ''Xerolinus'' has a masculine
gender.
Its etymology comes from the Greek (''xērós''; "dry, arid") combined with the ending of the generic name ''
Diasolinus''. This reflects the habitat these beetles are found in. ''Xerolinus'' is in the subtribe
Opatrina within the tribe
Opatrini
Opatrini is a Tribe (biology), tribe of darkling beetles (Tenebrionidae) in the subfamily Tenebrioninae.
In research by Kamiński et al. published in 2021, Opatrini and six other tribes were moved from Tenebrioninae into the newly resurrected s ...
.
Distribution
''Xerolinus'' is found in southern Florida and the
West Indies, including the
Lucayan Archipelago, the
Greater Antilles, and the
British Virgin Islands. The majority of described species are from the Cuban archipelago, although Ivie and Hart note that there will likely be even more species in the Lucayan Archipelago once its fauna become better studied. Most species in ''Xerolinus'' are
endemic to a single island or to a group of islands corresponding to a single island in the
Pleistocene. The eastern extreme of this genus's range is
Great Camanoe.
Description
''Xerolinus'' species have an oval or elongate oval body length with a length of .
Species
, the following thirty-one species are recognized:
* ''
X. alfaroi''
— Cuba
* ''
X. alutaceus''
— USA (Florida), Cuba
* ''
X. armasi''
— Cuba
* ''
X. bahamae''
— The Bahamas
* ''
X. bielawskii''
— Cuba
* ''
X. burtoni''
—
Cayman Islands
The Cayman Islands () is a self-governing British Overseas Territory—the largest by population in the western Caribbean Sea. The territory comprises the three islands of Grand Cayman, Cayman Brac and Little Cayman, which are located to the ...
* ''
X. caguamensis''
— Cuba
* ''
X. camanoensis''
—
Virgin Islands
* ''
X. caymanensis''
— Cayman Islands
* ''
X. cubanus''
— Cuba
* ''
X. dentipes''
— Cuba, Cayman Islands
* ''
X. difficilis''
— Cuba
* ''
X. dispar''
— USA (Florida)
* ''
X. dozieri''
—
Turks and Caicos Islands
* ''
X. elongatus''
— Cuba
* ''
X. garridoi''
— Cuba
* ''
X. hernandezi''
— Cuba (
Isla de Juventud
Isla de la Juventud (; en, Isle of Youth) is the second-largest Cuban island (after Cuba's mainland) and the seventh-largest island in the West Indies (after mainland Cuba itself, Hispaniola, Jamaica, Puerto Rico, Trinidad, and Andros Isla ...
)
* ''
X. juraguensis''
— Cuba
* ''
X. kulzeri''
—The Bahamas (
Mayaguana)
* ''
X. macamboensis''
— Cuba
* ''
X. minor''
— Cayman Islands
* ''
X. orientalis''
— Cuba
* ''
X. puncticeps''
— Cuba
* ''
X. rufoclavatus'' — Cuba
* ''
X. sallei''
—
Hispaniola
Hispaniola (, also ; es, La Española; Latin and french: Hispaniola; ht, Ispayola; tnq, Ayiti or Quisqueya) is an island in the Caribbean that is part of the Greater Antilles. Hispaniola is the most populous island in the West Indies, and th ...
* ''
X. smalli''
— Cuba
* ''
X. swearingenae''
— Jamaica
* ''
X. that''
— The Bahamas
* ''
X. this''
— The Bahamas
* ''
X. waterhousii''
— Cuba
* ''
X. zayasi''
— Cuba
In addition, an
undescribed species mentioned in Robert H. Turnbow Jr. and
Michael C. Thomas
Michael Charles Thomas (May 5, 1948 – October 14, 2019) was an American entomologist who co-authored the book series ''American Beetles''.
Born in Miami, Florida, Thomas graduated from the University of South Florida in 1970 with a Bachelor o ...
's 2008 checklist of Bahamian coleoptera belongs to ''Xerolinus''; Turnbow and Thomas had referred to it as "''Diastolinus'' prob. n. sp."
Ivie and Hart also noted that there are many other undescribed species as well as islands whose beetle species have not thoroughly been sampled.
References
Works cited
*
{{Taxonbar, from=Q55637986
Tenebrioninae
Tenebrionidae genera