PSYCHE 
Vol. 59 March, 1952 No. 1 
SIX NEW SPECIES OF MEGISTOPS 
WITH KEYS TO THE KNOWN SPECIES 
(COLEOPTERA) * 
By Doris H. Blake 
Arlington, Virginia 
The genus Megistops, originally based by Boheman 1 on 
two species supposedly from San Francisco but actually 
from Ecuador 2 , at present contains fifteen species. Eight 
of these were described from the West Indies, ranging 
from Cuba to Trinidad, and the other seven from Venez- 
uela (1), Brazil (3), Ecuador (2), and Paraguay (1). 
The group is for the most part fairly homogeneous in its 
size, shape and coloring, being composed of small (2-5 mm.) , 
oval beetles with extraordinarily large eyes that in some 
are contiguous on the occiput. Eight of the species (three 
from the West Indies) have deep reddish brown or piceous 
elytra with four large pale spots, five have dark spots on 
pale yellow elytra, and four (from the West Indies) have 
streaks or subvittate dark markings. Only five (of which 
three, I believe, are merely dark color forms of other 
species) have the elytra of one color. It is not difficult to 
conceive that all of these color patterns on the elytra are 
degrees of coloring of the typical four-spotted elytra, 
varying from nearly pale, with only remnants of spots, to 
entirely dark. 
Recently I have been able to examine many type speci- 
mens of Boheman’s, Baly’s, Jacoby’s, Bryant’s, and Duvi- 
* Published with a grant from the Museum of Comparative Zoology 
at Harvard College. 
1 Boheman, Eugenia, Resa, Coleoptera, 1859, p.187. 
2 Blake, Bull. Brooklyn Ent. Sec., vol. 26, 1931, p.8. 
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