PROCEEDINGS OF THE UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 



issued 



SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION 



U. S. NATIONAL MUSEUM 

 Vol. 87 Washington : 1939 No. 3075 



A TAXONOMIC STUDY OF NEOTROPICAL BEETLES OF 

 THE FAMILY MORDELLIDAE, WITH DESCRIPTIONS 

 OF NEW SPECIES 



By Eugene Ray 



The Morclellidae are an obscure family of small or minute beetles 

 that have never commanded much attention, owing to the relatively 

 innocuous habits of the adults and larvae. Very little has ever been 

 done with this group except in a taxonomic way, and not a single 

 complete life history is known. 



Unfortunately, many of the forms collected in obscure places are 

 known only from unique specimens. It seems unlikely that taxono- 

 mists will ever arrive at a point where unlimited material will be 

 available for all species, and, no doubt, many uniques will remain 

 alone in collections for years to come. However, some of these 

 single individuals are sufficiently distinct from their closest allies 

 in the matter of actual description and structural characters to per- 

 mit their proposal as new names. It has been the policy of the 

 present writer to describe such uniques only when they can be sepa- 

 rated on the basis of characters that are known not to vary in other 

 members of the family. Many more, which seem distinct but are 

 closely allied to known forms, have been set aside without names, 

 because the characters needed for their separation are known to be 

 variable in certain cases. No description has been made on the 

 basis of color and pubescent markings alone, since these features 

 are often considerably aberrant, but rather, when one or more struc- 

 tural points of differentiation can be found, the color and pattern 



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