FECUNDITY, DEVELOPMENT AND NATURAL HISTORY 
OF MERONERA VENUSTULA (ERICHSON) 
(COLEOPTERA: STAPHYLINIDAE: ALEOCHARINAE)* 
By James S. Ashe 
Department of Zoology, 
Field Museum of Natural History, 
Roosevelt Road at Lake Shore Drive, 
Chicago, Illinois 60605 
Introduction 
Knowledge of habits of the large, diverse and taxonomically diffi- 
cult staphylinid subfamily Aleocharinae is very incomplete (Ashe 
1981, 1984, Ashe and Watrous 1984). It has been generally assumed 
that, except for aberrent groups such as the fungus-feeding Gyro- 
phaenina (Ashe 1984), aleocharines as a whole are mostly generalist 
predators (Fenyes 1918-21). Yet the diversity of aleocharines and 
their abundance in many habitats suggests that other means of 
resource use may have been evolutionarily explored. A greater 
understanding of the diversity of ways that aleocharines use the 
habitat, the distribution of use patterns and relationships of these 
patterns to phylogenetic relationships among taxa is essential for 
clarifying major evolutionary features within this subfamily. 
This paper represents a contribution toward that knowledge. It 
developed from attempts to keep a variety of aleocharine adults in 
the laboratory, and to encourage them to lay eggs with the hope of 
obtaining identified larvae which could be compared with aleocha- 
rine larvae frequently encountered in he field. The procedures were 
particularly effective for specimens of Meronera venustula (Erich- 
son) (Tribe Tachyusini). 
The genus Meronera, described by Sharp (1887) from Central 
America, includes 9 species (Fenyes 1918-21). Most described spe- 
cies occur in Central or South America, and the group appears to be 
primarily Neotropical in distribution. In America north of Mexico, 
1 species, Meronera venustula (Erichson) [including 2 species de- 
scribed by Casey (1906) and synonomized by Fenyes (1918-21)] is 
* Manuscript received by the editor March 26, 1985. 
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