3 



The next use of the name Ischyrus was by Falderman 



(1837) in describing Ischyrus lepidus, presently a member 

 of Triplax Herbst (1793) (fide Chujo & Chujo 1990) . The 

 name Ischyrus was then used as a subgroup of Erotylus 

 Fabricius (1775) by Guerin-Meneville (1841) in describing 

 E. (Ischyrus) nebulosus, presently a member of 

 Brachysphaenus Lacordaire (1842) (fide Crotch 1876) . These 

 uses of "Ischyrus" illustrate early workers' attempts at 

 placing new species into taxa based on superficial 

 characters . 



Lacordaire (1842) was the first person to provide a 

 description of the genus Ischyrus, for which he gave credit 

 to Chevrolat in Dejean (1836) as the author of the name. 

 He moved many previously described species into Ischyrus 

 and described 17 new species. Unfortunately, Lacordaire 

 did not designate a type species for Ischyrus . 



Lacordaire split the genus into two divisions. The 

 first division contained species with larger body size and 

 strongly keeled prosternum, mostly species listed in the 

 Dejean catalogs as Ischyrus Chevrolat. The second division 

 contained species with smaller body size and a weakly 

 keeled prosternum, mostly species listed under Mycotretus 

 Chevrolat in the Dejean catalogs, including Erotylus 

 quadripunctatus Olivier. Lacordaire based his generic 

 concepts on reasonably sound morphological features that 

 are still in use. He also maintained many previously 

 published species names that had not been described [nomina 



