Proceedings of 

 the United States 

 National Museum 



SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION • WASHINGTON, D.C. 



Volume 118 1966 Number 3529 



A REVIEW OF THE BEETLES 



OF THE GENUS NEOBROTICA 



AND SOME CLOSELY RELATED GENERA 



By Doris H. Blake 



Honorary Research Associate, Department of Entomology 



The genus Neobrotica was first described by Jacoby in the "Biologia 

 Centrali-Americana" (Coleoptera, vol. 6, pt. 1, p. 571, 1887), who listed 

 under it 21 species. Only one of these, Diabrotica oberthuri Baly, 

 had been described previously. In the supplement published in 1892, 

 Jacoby added three more species from Central America. In 1889 

 he published two new species of Neobrotica from South America. 

 Weise added three, Bowditch two, and recently Bechyne ten more, all 

 from South America. One from the United States (Arizona) was 

 described by Fall. A few older species of Olivier and Fabricius have 

 also been added to the genus thereby doubling the original number. 



In Schenkling's "Coleopterorum catalogus" (1924, pt. 78, p. 103), 

 Weise has taken the fii'st species described by Jacoby under Neo- 

 brotica — A^. variabilis — as the type of the genus, a rather unfortunate 

 choice as Jacoby in a later publication assigned to variabilis a South 

 American beetle different from the Mexican variabilis. 



In his description of the genus, Jacoby (loc. cit.) gave the following 

 generic characters to differentiate Neobrotica from related genera: 



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