NEW SPECIES OF NORTH AMERICAN CLERID BEETLES 

 OF THE GENUS AULICUS. 



By Charles Schaeffer, 



Of the Museum of the Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences. 



Three species of Aulicus are at the present time recorded from the 

 United States. These are: A. nero Spinola, monticola Gorham, and 

 femoralis Schaeffer. The first two were originally described from 

 Mexico and the last from Arizona. Of these nero was first recorded 

 from the United States by Dr. George H. Horn ' from specimens 

 collected by William S. Gabb in the coast range of southern Cali- 

 fornia. Later Horn 2 and Wolcott 3 have recorded the species from 

 Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and Lower California, thus giving nero 

 a wide distribution in the southwestern United States. I have seen 

 specimens from these additional localities, and after a close study 

 of them am convinced that several distinct species were confused 

 as Aulicus nero. 



In the typical species of the genus the claws are simple in both 

 sexes, but in certain species some or all of the claws are toothed or 

 cleft in the male and simple in the female. Such species do not 

 differ otherwise from typical Aulicus, and I do not think it advisable 

 to separate them generically on a character which is possessed by 

 one sex alone and which also varies in the number of claws affected 

 in the different species. An aberrant species (antennatus) , described 

 below, differs from typical Aulicus in the form of the two or three 

 antennal joints preceding the three-jointed club, and as below stated, 

 appeal's to be intermediate between the genera Aulicus and Xeno- 

 clerus. 



In the males the intermediate antennal joints are usually shorter 

 and stouter and the club larger than in the females, and the fifth 

 ventral abdominal segment is usually more or less deeply arcuate- 

 emarginate at apex in the former, but truncate in the female. 



Some species are more variable in color than others. In all the 

 species the blue markings of the elytra are similar and consist of 

 a sutural vitta, a median and an apical fascia; the rest red or yellow. 

 Of the blue markings the median elytral fascia is especially variable 



1 Trans. Amer. Ent. Soc., vol. 2, 1868, p. 131. 



1 Proc. California Acad. Sci., ser. 2, vol. 4, 1894, p. 331. 



» Field Mus. of Nat. Hist., Zool. Ser., vol. 7, 1910, p. 365. 



Proceedings U. S. National Museum. Vol. 59-No. 2365. 



151 



