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Amphiscolytini - new tribe of bark beetles (Scolytidae)

Michail Yu. Mandelshtam (St.Petersburg, Russia) and Roger A. Beaver (Chiangmai,Thailand)

The full paper is published in Zootaxa:
Amphiscolytus - a new genus, and Amphiscolytini - a new tribe of Scolytidae (Coleoptera) for Dacryophthorus capensis (Schedl).
Zootaxa (2003), 298: 1-8.

A new genus Amphiscolytus and a new tribe Amphiscolytini are described to include Dacryophthorus capensis Schedl, 1971 – a poorly known species of Scolytidae (Coleoptera) with a unique set of features from South Africa (see figure below). The new tribe Amphiscolytini clearly belongs to the subfamily Hylesininae, and is perhaps remotely related to the tribe Tomicini which is absent from the Ethiopian faunistic region. Nothing is known about the biology of this aberrant species, although the variation in size and equal sex ratio suggest a phloeophagous mode of life. Most known specimens of Amphiscolytus capensis are deposited in the Transvaal Museum. Since the reclassification of Scolytidae by Stephen Lane Wood published in the Great Basin Naturalist Memoirs in 1986, no other new tribes of Scolytidae have been described. The new paper supports our opinion that many taxa of Scolytidae remain to be described, and the status of many other taxa needs to be re-evaluated.

Full text of the paper (including 6 figures) as a PDF file is available from Michail Mandelshtam. Please, send your requests via
E-mail: michail@molgen.iem.ras.spb.ru