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Isanopus

Stylianos Chatzimanolis
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taxon links [down<--]Xanthopygina Interpreting the tree
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Relationships after Chatzimanolis 2008.
Containing group: Xanthopygina

Introduction

The xanthopygine genus Isanopus occurs in tropical and montane rainforests from Mexico to Brazil. The genus is rare in collections and this may be due to the habitat preferences of the species. Most recent materials have been collected in treefall litter, with a very small number of specimens (less than ten) collected in flight intercept or malaise traps.

Characteristics

Isanopus can be distinguished from all other xanthopygine staphylinids by the following  characters: 

Isanopus looks superficially similar to some species of Xanthopygus (for example: X. alienus Bernhauer, 1905, X. calidus (Erichson, 1839), X. chrysopygus (Nordmann, 1837), X. cyanelytrius (Perty, 1830), X. elegans Bernhauer, 1905 and X. flohri Sharp, 1884) but can be easily distinguished from them by the general morphology of the head (in Xanthopygus the temporal area posterior to the eyes greatly expanded), as well as the other diagnostic characters of the genus. Additionally, Oligotergus mexicanus (Sharp, 1884) and O. prolixus (Sharp, 1884) have superficially similar antennae, but they can be easily distinguished from Isanopus by the usually densely punctuated pronotum, and the shape of the aedeagus with the paramere considerably longer than the median lobe.

Discussion of Phylogenetic Relationships

A phylogenetic analysis of 19 adult morphological characters from six ingroup taxa resulted in a single most parsimonious tree (Chatzimanolis 2008). Isanopus is robustly hypothesized to be monophyletic with high bootstrap and Bremer support values. Despite the absence of any homoplasy on the tree, the characters used in the analysis do not provide enough phylogenetic resolution to determine the position of I. sahlbergi and I. tenuicornis. It is worth mentioning here that I. ashei, I. hinojosai and I. sallaei are distributed exclusively in Central America in contrast to the three other species of Isanopus that are distributed in South America.

References

Chatzimanolis S. 2008. A revision of the neotropical beetle genus Isanopus Sharp, 1876 (Coleoptera: Staphylinidae: Staphylinini). J. Nat. Hist. 42(25-28): 1765-1792.

Information on the Internet

MorphBank Gallery I MorphBank Gallery II
Title Illustrations
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Scientific Name Isanopus ashei
Specimen Condition Dead Specimen
Identified By S. Chatzimanolis
Sex Male
Image Use creative commons This media file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial License - Version 3.0.
Copyright © 2008 Stylianos Chatzimanolis
Scientific Name Isanopus hinojosai
Specimen Condition Dead Specimen
Identified By S. Chatzimanolis
Sex Male
Image Use creative commons This media file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial License - Version 3.0.
Copyright © 2008 Stylianos Chatzimanolis
About This Page

Stylianos Chatzimanolis
University of Tennessee at Chattanooga

Correspondence regarding this page should be directed to Stylianos Chatzimanolis at

Page: Tree of Life Isanopus. Authored by Stylianos Chatzimanolis. The TEXT of this page is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution License - Version 3.0. Note that images and other media featured on this page are each governed by their own license, and they may or may not be available for reuse. Click on an image or a media link to access the media data window, which provides the relevant licensing information. For the general terms and conditions of ToL material reuse and redistribution, please see the Tree of Life Copyright Policies.

Citing this page:

Chatzimanolis, Stylianos. 2009. Isanopus. Version 04 January 2009. http://tolweb.org/Isanopus/10272/2009.01.04 in The Tree of Life Web Project, http://tolweb.org/

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