An extralimital fossil of the genus Diagrypnodes (Coleoptera: Salpingidae: Inopeplinae)

ABSTRACT

A new species of narrow-waisted bark beetle is described from Eocene Rovno amber (Ukraine): Diagrypnodes villumi sp. nov. (Coleoptera: Salpingidae). This fossil refutes a simplistic view of the genus Diagrypnodes as a typical Gondwanan lineage whose extant species are disjunct between Australia, New Caledonia, and New Zealand. Diagrypnodes villumi is the first definitive fossil species of the subfamily Inopeplinae, the other being Eopeplus stetzenkoi Kirejtshuk and Nel from lowermost Eocene (53 Ma) Oise amber which was placed in this subfamily, albeit tentatively. Extant inopeplines occur in tropical and subtropical areas worldwide. The presence of Diagrypnodes and Eopeplus in Eocene Europe suggest a formerly different and presumably wider distribution of the subfamily. Furthermore, the ant Lasius schiefferdeckeri Mayr (Hymenoptera: Formicidae) preserved in the amber piece as a eusyninclusion with D. villumi is a new example of the simultaneous presence of the temperate and frost intolerant elements in European Eocene amber forests.LSID urn:lsid:zoobank.org:pub:C7383694-E94F-4CEA-82FE-6C354F65E647

KEYWORDS:

• Taxonomy
• palaeoentomology
• Cenozoic
• Eocene
• amber

Acknowledgments

This work was supported by a Villum Experiment grant “Baltic Amber Enigma” to AS (including postdoctoral fellowship of JJS). E.P. is supported by a grant from the scholarship programme Scholars at Risk Ukraine (SARU) jointly funded by the Villum Foundation, Carlsberg Foundation and Novo Nordisk Foundation. Thanks to Kristi Ellingsen for permitting use of the photo of Diagrypnodes wakefieldi Waterhouse, 1876 in Figure 5 and to Jan Pedersen (NHMD) for relaying vivid accounts of how he and Andrea Schomann collected Diagrypnodes wakefieldi in New Zealand. The photo of Eleusis pallida in Figure 4 is used under Creative Commons BY-SA 3.0 and was taken by user Spongymesophyll (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eleusis_%28beetle%29#/media/File:Eleusis_pallida_0157234_dorsal.tif) and has been edited (background removed).

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Villum Fonden [Baltic Amber Enigma]. E.P. is supported by a grant from the scholarship programme Scholars at Risk Ukraine (SARU) jointly funded by the Villum Foundation, Carlsberg Foundation and Novo Nordisk Foundation.